Swiss Datacenter Efficiency Association

Introduction

The SDEA Label originated from a digitalswitzerland challenge in 2018. The challenge’s objective was for Switzerland to become an attractive datacenter hosting country by implementing a label to certify green datacenters. The challenge was met, the SDEA Association was founded in January 2020 and the SDEA Label was subsequently launched at the WEF in Davos.

The Association

SDEA is an alliance of industrial and academic organizations that came together to create a unique and integrated approach to DC Efficiency and Emissions Certification. The alliance was initiated by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and includes EcoCloud at EPFL, Green IT Switzerland, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), the Swiss Data Center Association (SDCA), and the Swiss Telecommunications Association (asut). The initiative is supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy through the program SwissEnergy.

The Board & Experts

Adrian Altenburger | Board member

Adrian is a professor and the head of the Institute of Building Technology and Energy at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
He is also a lecturer in the field of energy and building services engineering in Switzerland and abroad (ETH Zurich, HTW Chur, Harvard University - Graduate School of Design and Harvard University - Extension School).

Vincent Barro | Board member

Vincent graduated from HEC Paris and Oxford University. He started his career in Import & Export in 2004 and joined APC in 2008. He has expanded his experience and knowledge across a few locations, including different cities in France, UK, Ireland, Austria, Germany and finally Switzerland while manifesting his expert insights in the Datacenter Business. Vincent is also active as a member of several institutions the CCIFS, CCEF, French Tech, to name a few and is active internationally in associations around Datacenters and sustainability.

Martin Casaulta | Board member

Martin Casaulta has been working in the IT industry since his graduation in mathematics, physics and information technologies, mainly as a technology consultant for enterprise IT infrastructure solutions. He has been with HPE since 1989, in multiple positions but always within the company’s presales community where he gained the prestigious title of Distinguished Technologist, a title acknowledging rigorous standards within the three performance criteria of HPE's Technical Career Path: impact and continuity of technical contributions, leadership, breadth and depth of knowledge.

Fabrice Consenti | Treasurer

Fabrice is a serial entrepreneur and after acting as CEO for many companies, he is now chairman of the board for EDIFICOM SA and serves on several other associations as Executive Committee Member like SDCA (Swiss Data Center Association). He is also Founding Member of Fondation SGH | Institut de Recherche Cybermonde. Fabrice graduated from EPFL & University of Lausanne (Switzerland).

Babak Falsafi | President

Babak is a Professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences and the founding director of EcoCloud, an industrial/academic consortium at EPFL investigating sustainable cloud and datacenter technologies. He has made numerous contributions to server design and evaluation with impact on commodity digital platforms. He is a Fellow of ACM and IEEE.

René Fasan | Board member

René is a computer scientist, MAS Information Security. For over 20 years he has been a specialist for data center infrastructures with focus on security, availability and energy efficiency.

Christian Grasser | Board member

Christian holds a Master of Science form ETH Zurich and he has been working for more than 20 years in the ICT industry. Today, he is the director of the Swiss Telecommunication Association representing 400 Swiss companies. He has a broad professional experience in environmental topics, energy questions and ICT. During the last three years he organized an energy efficiency campaign for data centers supported by EnergieSchweiz.

Fabian Lenz | Sales & marketing expert

Fabian holds a Masters degree in business & economics and started his career in the industry of technology about 7 years ago. Since then he worked in several international locations, such as Sweden, UK, Spain and Switzerland, developing international experience. Originally coming from the sports environment, he quickly appreciated the interesting & innovative character of the technology sector, working in different Sales roles for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

SDEA members