Data center operations, commissioning and DORA compliance
BACKGROUND
Alain Constantinidis has nearly thirty years in infrastructure and IT, over fifteen of them running Tier III and Tier IV data center environments. He managed the operation of 190 racks across several rooms: power, cooling, physical security, access control and space planning. He wrote the site's operating procedures (access, installation, cabling, maintenance, periodic reviews) and made sure they were applied.
He took part in the commissioning of two Tier IV certified sites (six rooms, 4,200 m²) and of a new room built on self-contained racks, and led room relocations without service interruption. He is now the DORA governance and compliance lead in an international group: mapping of critical assets and third-party ICT providers, operational resilience, audit preparation. Trained in HVAC engineering and ITIL certified, he works with the Uptime Institute, ANSI/TIA-942, EN 50600, ISO/IEC 22237 and ISO 27001 frameworks.
WHAT HE BRINGS TO A DATA CENTER PROJECT
Operations audits: procedures, maintenance, cabling, condition of the rooms, single points of failure, gaps against industry standards. What you see in the room, compared with what the documents say.
DORA assessment of a provider or a room: what a financial entity must check at its provider, from the contract to the floor, and what the provider must be able to show its client's auditor.
Commissioning and room moves: physical preparation, acceptance testing, handover to operations, relocation or closure of a critical room without downtime.
Operations tooling: DCIM, IPAM, PUE monitoring, standardisation of equipment and procedures, on rooms from 15 to 200 racks.
WHO IT IS FOR
Banks, insurers and other financial entities subject to DORA, companies running their own server rooms, providers preparing for a client's audit, investors who want to know the operational condition of a site before committing.
HOW HE WORKS
Alain works within the GridReadiness network, which remains your single point of contact, on one-off audits or longer assignments, subject to availability, in French, Italian or English. Each assignment is set out in a written proposal.