Categories include “Audacious Idea,” “Innovation in a Smaller Data Center,” and “Joint IT and Facilities Innovation.” Uptime is increasing this category field to 10 next year versus eight for past awards. 2010 winners included Microsoft, who’s “Audacious Idea” was a containerized data center in Chicago that reduced PUE from 1.6 to 1.15, reduced building costs by 33% and reduced time to deployment by 30%.

You’ve got a bit of time to get the applications in – they’re not due until February 18, 2011. You can learn more about the application process and the awards right here.

The Uptime tiers have become the de facto standard for availability in the data center industry. The system includes four tiers that escalate in availability as the number increases, with Tier 4 being completely fault tolerant. Uptime has tried to rein in the standards, as many data centers have claimed a certain tier availability without official certification from Uptime. On the other side, some have questioned the relevancy of the tier standards, saying that putting them to practical use can be as difficult as solving the Da Vinci Code.

The first program Uptime will announce tomorrow is the Owners Advisory Committee, a program that could lead to changes within the decade-old tier system itself. The committee will consist of data center end users who are Uptime Institute Site Uptime Network members, and will make annual recommendations on how to update the tier system.

Currently there are about 30 companies that have agreed to be part of the committee, Uptime Institute officials said. They expect there to be many more. Hank Seader, an Uptime consultant who helped develop the tier system, mentioned two issues in particular that he expected to pop up in the committee’s infancy. First, he expects there to be a further refining of Tier 1 that differentiates a non-redundant data center from a server closet or a desktop with a bunch of servers on it. Next, he expects the group to recommend changes that better define what components should be redundant in a Tier 2 data center.

The committee will make recommendations primarily through a Web-based forum. From that forum issues will emerge, and then the committee will make a formal recommendation to Uptime through a voting process.

“Right now the idea is that they’ll make the recommendation, and it will be the current tier certifying authorities deciding how it will go into the standard,” Seader said.

There is more information at Uptime’s Owner Advisory Committee site. Though it doesn’t cost extra to be a part of the committee, you must be a Site Uptime Network member to join the committee. Membership costs $12,000 a year, according to the Site Uptime Network’s call for new members.

Secondly, Uptime will announce tomorrow an accreditation course for certified engineers on the tier standards. The two-day course will take place quarterly throughout the country, with the first two scheduled to take place in September in Denver, and the third in Dallas, likely in December. The course will cost $5,000. There’s more information at the Accredited Tier Designer site.

Seader said these will be detailed, technically heavy courses on practically applying the tier standards to real data centers. There will be seven sessions: overview, mechanical infrastructure, electrical infrastructure, ancillary systems (such as water and backup fuel, for example), common disqualifying design omissions, a hands-on group exercise, and the exam.

Julian Kudritzki, vice president of development and operations for Uptime’s professional services division, said the courses will give accredited engineers an advantage as they’ll have an “enhanced understanding of the tier classification standards, and it will be a competitive differentiator for them when they respond to RFPs that have a clear tier design goal aspect to them.”

Perhaps just as importantly, Uptime is moving toward opening the certification process up to outside engineers. Currently only members of Uptime’s professional services division can certify data centers as having a certain tier level. Seader said he foresees a time when engineers who have taken the accreditation course could certify data centers with a certain tier level.

“I anticipate that in three to five years – closer to three – that there will be tier certification authorities outside of The Uptime Institute,” Seader said.

I’m going to try to talk to Site Uptime Network members as well as Uptime critics and have a more fleshed-out story later this week, so stay tuned.

After years of secrecy around how its data centers operate, Google has now drawn the curtain to show how efficient its data center facilities are. But during a panel discussion at The Uptime Institute’s conference in New York today, some questioned whether all data centers should be cut in the same mold.

In particular, the question was whether the data center power usage effectiveness (PUE) of some businesses — financial institutions, for example — should be compared to those of search engines such as Google.

“Should a bank have the same PUE as a search engine?” Ken Brill, Uptime founder and executive director. “The answer is no.”

The reasoning behind it is that bank and financial applications require a higher level of uptime than search queries, and thus need more redundancy, which leads to lower efficiency. But Weihl questioned the logic.

“We actually have some Sarbanes Oxley requirements,” he said. “We’re not just a search engine company. We also run very reliable data centers that I think any data center operator here would be proud to run.”

Weihl later added that the discussion sounded like “people making excuses for why the EPA or DOE should not push hard for a standard because, hey, we’re different.”

“To me,  not to be too combative, but that sounds like an excuse for not doing better.”

Currently the federal government is working on developing an Energy Star rating for data centers. Michael Zatz, the manager of the Energy Star commercial buildings program, sees the potential for different categories of data centers, but would prefer that those categories be defined by what kind of work the data centers perform, and not necessarily by what industry they’re in or how they identify themselves.