UK Grid to add a further 27k sq ft of Data Centre space to it's portfolio

UK Grid, the Manchester-based data centre provider, has made its boldest move yet in its programme to supply businesses in the UK with carbon neutral data centre space, with the launch of a 27,000 sq ft site, Parkway 2.

The introduction of the site will bring online over 50,000 sq ft of carbon neutral data centre space, and will ensure that UK Grid has the largest portfolio of data centre capacity in the North of England. In addition, 15 new jobs will be created to help manage the sites and help meet customer needs.

The new Parkway 2 site, which is also carrier neutral, with dark fibre being supplied by SSE and Geo ,contains all of the low energy consumption technology that has made UK Grid’s primary Synergy House site at Manchester Science Parks a benchmark of quality for the data centre sector, and has been such a success for customers. Reducing energy consumption is the largest challenge facing data centres, and UK Grid has led the sector with its use of energy saving technology such as cold aisle containment.

In addition to energy reducing technology, UK Grid will be offsetting its carbon use at the Parkway 2 site by launching sustainable forestry on its farm in Scotland, through its offshoot business UK Grid Renewables.

Rob Garbutt, CEO at UK Grid, commented: “The launch of the Parkway 2 site is a proud moment for UK Grid, as it is what we have been working towards for a number of years. Not only have we created the largest portfolio of data centre space in the North, but all of the capacity is carbon neutral. This is something no other company in our sector can provide, and offers our clients and customers an environmentally sound product.

“We are targeting a mix of SMEs and corporate businesses who are looking for data centre space, and the site will be in full operation by February 2011. However, customers are already buying space and our sales team has been run off their feet which is a fantastic sign.”

Neil Hutchings, Managing Director of SSE Telecoms, commented: "The extension of the high capacity SSE Telecoms fibre network into the new UK Grid Parkway 2 data centre complements our strategy of targeting key locations within the North West region. High performance, low latency connectivity is critical for data centre operators and their customers. We are pleased to provide UK Grid with access to our regional and national connectivity solutions."

The Parkway 2 site launch is the latest development in a busy year for the company. Only six years old as a business, UK Grid is currently undergoing expansion of its existing sites in Manchester and London, has committed to invest in green technology including wind farms over the coming years. Most recently, the business was named in the top 10 fastest growing technology businesses in the UK, in the Deloitte Fast50, coming second overall in the North of England.

Its good to TalkTalk for UK Grid

Data centre provider UK Grid has announced a lucrative deal with TalkTalk as the telecoms company seeks more capacity to serve customers in the north west.

The landline and broadband provider has taken on 2,000 sq ft of data centre space at UK Grid’s flagship site in Manchester.

TalkTalk says it needs to increase capacity because its customers are making more calls and sending more data through its network.

It already has two data centres in Birmingham and two in London and the new deal increases the group’s coverage in the north west. Irlam-based TalkTalk’s Graham Chisnall said: “It has been good to work with another north west-based company enabling TalkTalk to expand capacity in the region.”

UK Grid designs, builds and operates data centre facilities, connecting networks for some of the country’s biggest broadband providers, and hosts servers for customers including Arts Council England, AQA,
Kitbag and Clickandbuy.

It has doubled its turnover every year since it was founded in 2004, with revenues of £2m in the 12 months to March and is forecasting sales of £4m for the current financial year.

The firm currently has three data centres in Manchester, with a fourth scheduled to open in November and a fifth in January. It will also have a centre in London within 12 months.

TalkTalk recently announced revenues of £444m for the first quarter of 2010 and has 4.23 million customers.

It is to launch mobile phone and data services under its own brand after striking a deal with Vodafone. Rob Garbutt, chief executive at UK Grid, said: “We are delighted to have completed this deal with TalkTalk. The company is ambitious and is already working hard to increase its services to over four million customers and more than 100,000 businesses.

“We believe that the agreement with a provider of this calibre shows the growing confidence and interest in the UK Grid model of cost-effective, cleaner and efficient data centre provision, and we are pleased to have TalkTalk Technology on board.”

UK Grid Nominated for Green Initiative Award

UK Grid is proud to have been nominated for "Best European Green Initiative" award at the 6th Data Centre Europe event. Nominees for this award and others has attracted the likes of Telecity Group, Equinix Europe, BT, Control Circle, IBM and Interxion.

The Best European Green Initiative award looks at initiatives a data centre has implemented to reduce its environmental impact and how it measures its environmental efficiency. It then goes on to look in percentage terms, what impact your initiative has had on your environmental impact and how this is measured.

The awards ceremony is at the events closing gala dinner in Nice on the 23rd April 2010.

This award highlights the drive for data centres throughout Europe to reduce their carbon footprint and to build and operate carbon balanced data centres to reduce their impact on the environment.

UK Grid Joins the Green Grid

The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to developing and promoting energy efficiency for data centres and business computing ecosystems by:

• Defining meaningful, user-centric models and metrics
• Promoting the adoption of energy efficient standards, processes, measurement methods and technologies
• Developing standards, measurement methods, processes and new technologies to improve performance against the defined metrics

The Green Grid has set out to develop a standard set of measurements to make it easier for an end-user to manage their facilities and thus achieve optimal energy efficiency within data centres around the world. The Green Grid, comprising of peers throughout the data centre and computing industries, seek to unite global industry efforts to standardise and agree on a common set of metrics, processes, methods and new technologies to further its common goal.

Two such matrices are the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Data centre infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE). The Green Grid is also developing a third matrix, Data Centre Productivity (DCP).

UK Grid made the decision to join the Green Grid to work with some of the industry leaders in developing the ultimate in energy efficient data centres, thus lowering operating costs and also reducing UK Grid's carbon footprint.

The Green Grid's advice to data centres is to constantly measure your PUE and UK Grid have followed this advice to the letter, enabling our PUE to be reduced from 1.5 to 1.35. UK Grid has a target PUE of 1.2 in some of our newer facilities utilising free-cooling technologies which we will see come online towards the end of 2010.

UK Grid Launches New Blog Site

A new blog has been launched by the UK Grid team to discuss the green issues and challenges faced within the data centre arena. The blog is called "it's not easy being green" and can be found at http://blog.ukgrid.net

The site also contains a data centre industry news feed linked into twitter and soon a digital development feed about the rapidly expanding Manchester digital community.

The site will be updated by the UK Grid team and more feeds will be added soon so please check back.