Many of you will have seen the recent announcements on linked in and the trade press about our new or should that be old venture, the National Data Centre Academy. (NDCA)
So, we thought we'd explain more on this blog post about why we're doing it.
Our MD is an ex BT apprentice and he recalls spending a lot of time at the BT engineering centres learning about the old and new technology, this was at a time when BT were transitioning from the old Strowger types exchanges (you see how they operated in this video) through to the crossbar type exchanges and the system X and other advancements in cabling and customer equipment.
Our training was a mixture of attending BTs own engineering colleges, on the job and attendance at a local technical college, in our MDs case the South East London Technical College known as SELTEC, but now called Lewisham College
The key point is that we, as apprentices, at BTs engineering colleges, were allowed to play with stuff without the fear of affecting the customers and we've noticed that in the data centre sector there isn't something similar and we've asked a lot of operators why this is, the response in every case is, we'd rather sell the space than create a training centre. And we absolutely get that, because if you set up a training centre it becomes a cost to the business, the initial set up, recruiting trainers and admin staff etc, and we know that many operators use external services to train their staff, the problem, as we see it, is that those training facilities are NOT data centre specific, they are general training suites, in some cases, its virtual training online!
Our view on this is, you wouldn't want the mechanic servicing your car to have gained all of their knowledge via a video link, you want someone with grease under their fingernails, you want them to have had real life experience, changing out clutches, working on an engine etc
The other aspect is that a lot of training is conducted in hotels and in general classrooms.
We dont think this is healthy for the industry, especially as we face a considerable amount of challenges down the road, issues with energy, issues with regulations, a huge growth trajectory, the well known global skills shortgage, the grey tsunami (older personnel leaving the industry through retirement before 2030) the challenge of building 'energy efficient' and 'sustainable' data centres etc.
The NDCA was born from a conversation in 2015 between our MD John Booth, Steve Hone and the late Simon Campbell Whyte of the Data Centre Alliance as part of the EU Funded EURECA project and following some recommendations contained in the PEDCA project, we mused upon the development of a data centre hub, one to train data centre staff, the second to showcase the latest technologies in an active environment and the third to be a public space and exhibition centre/attraction for the general public to visit, similar to the visitor centre at Goonhilly which our MD visited in 2010 and sadly is now closed.
We've searched high and low to find a suitable site since 2016, we've had 2 where we got very close to being able to open a facility, and a couple where we were unable to reach agreement with the site owners for a collaborative joint venture. But now, we have found and secured a lease on a property where we will be able to fulfill our dream, development is underway, and we will be opening in late October 2024, with a view to being fully operational towards the end of Q1 2025.
We know that this industry is very conservative with a small 'c' and very risk adverse, which is largely due to the contractual obligations and 'service level agreements' that are in place with both internal and external customers and this means that some of the newer data centre engineering concepts fall by the wayside. Or that in smaller enterprise data centres or server rooms, the personnel in charge of the room are normally IT staff frequently 'firefighting' problems elsewhere in the business, leading to what we call the 'tragedy of the commons' where non-savvy people do things in these rooms which you really shouldn't do.
So, we're creating a practical training environment, an active and passive showcase area, and will be able to host small events for product launches, industry updates and the like.
We're creating a fully open and collaborative data centre hub, that is open to all, even other training companies!
The next post in this series will be on our technical rooms which are under development, one of them should be operational by the 2 press/open days we have planned for the 21st and 23rd October, which sandwich the Data Centre Alliance Transformation Conference being held at the IET in Birmingham on the 22nd Oct.
So, if you're attending that event and staying over on the Monday or Tuesday nights, why not drop in to the NDCA on your way up or down from Birmingham, tickets are available from this link