It is imperative to underpin our digital infrastructure with genuine commonly agreed global standards and metrics. These are the tools needed to create consistent benchmarks which support better understanding and continued improvement of the delivery of digital services — in terms of both reliability/availability and energy efficiency. As it stands, the data center standards landscape is a very confusing and difficult arena to navigate through. There are documents and frameworks in existence which are routinely referenced but are not true standards in that they are not recognized by either national or international standards bodies. This lack of cohesion has resulted in a significant degree of competition for the very lucrative market of providing data center certification as well as a lack of common understanding across the data center sector. This presentation will address the issue of certification and take a look at some of the steps being made to truly standardize and globalize the data center standards landscape.