In May 2017, UL announced the development of a new program to certify data centers internationally. A new standard being developed, UL 3223, will serve as the basis for the certification program. The driver? Mass adoption of cloud computing has created a significant new risk: the potential to affect large numbers of companies and individuals in the event of a cloud services provider data center, infrastructure, or network failure.
According to RightScale’s “2017 State of the Internet” report, 85% of enterprise organizations have a multi-cloud strategy with 59% having more than 100 virtual machines or “VMs” in either Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure. A Statistica survey projects the public cloud market to hit $126 billion in revenue by 2020, up from $25 billion in 2015. Software and Platform as-a-service offerings are projected to add another $32 billion.