Protecting your clients from data center outages
Deepen client relationships by arming them with the insights to keep their critical digital infrastructure resilient against on-premises risks
The data center is the backbone of modern business. When a typical large enterprise experiences a data center outage, the disruption will cost them US$9,000 per minute, on average. Yet, 55% of data center operators have experienced an outage in the past three years.
On-premises data centers represent a critical point of failure for your clients’ business operations. Keeping this infrastructure operational is paramount. So, providing insights and expertise to protect them against foreseeable risks is a great way to deepen client relationships.
This article outlines the key data center risk areas you should be aware of and how you can draw on FM’s risk mitigation expertise to keep your clients protected.
Emerging trends in data center protection
On-premises data center design is increasingly shaped by the need for hybrid cloud integration, energy efficiency, and resilience against climate and operational risks.
Through applying our engineering expertise and extensive testing at our global research campuses, FM has identified a range of factors your clients must consider. These include:
- Construction and building materials: Using non-combustible, fire-rated materials and compartmentalized layouts helps to ensure any fire can be contained before it spreads.
- Fire detection and suppression systems: Early-warning smoke detection and inert gas suppression systems are critical to prevent damage and minimize potential downtime.
- Electrical system design and load management: Overloaded circuits, poorly maintained UPS systems, and unmonitored battery storage pose ignition risks and must be avoided.
- Cooling systems: Effective airflow management, temperature control, and maintenance processes are needed to reduce overheating and mitigate related fire hazards.
- Leak detection systems: Systems to ensure the timely identification of water leaks (from cooling or suppression systems) prevent secondary damage to equipment and infrastructure.
- Maintenance and disaster response practices: Routine inspections, clear emergency protocols, and staff training are essential to minimize risk and ensure rapid recovery.
As organizations evolve their data centers for the future, they must take care to ensure that they aren’t exposing themselves to new operational risks through the use of new technologies or materials.
Lithium-ion battery storage, liquid cooling systems, untested green construction materials, and more all have the potential to expose your clients to avoidable risks if used without the proper consideration.
Keeping client data centers resilient
When your clients are building or upgrading on-premises data centers, partnering with FM will help them to ensure these projects yield the right results. Our engineers and risk mitigation experts can provide the insights they need to ensure resilience at each stage of the data canter lifecycle:
- Site selection. Before starting any construction project, tools such as FM’s Resilience Index can help organizations to understand and analyze the natural catastrophe exposures, power availability, and grid access for each of the sites under consideration.
- Design and plan review. FM can review your clients’ plans and offer technical guidance to maximize resilience, using non-combustible construction techniques and risk-aware design to protect against losses.
- Construction phase. We are introducing a construction policy to provide seamless coverage from project inception through to operational transition. For phased handovers, we aim to provide combined Builders Risk and Operational coverage for parts of a facility that become operational while others remain under construction.
- Operational phase. Through partnering proactively with clients, we provide engineering-led risk assessments and co-create loss prevention and response plans to maximize their long-term operational resilience.
If you have a client you think could benefit from our expertise in data center risk management, we’d love to hear from you. Submit a new business enquiry here and we’ll be in touch ASAP.
This is part of a series of articles FM is producing to help brokers understand the value we can provide to their commercial property insurance clients. Look out for the next post in this series for more valuable insights.