UK data center activity has been on the rise lately, especially as new Points of Presence come online throughout the country and new facilities are opened in London.
ASPHostPortal.com to open first London data center
Web service provider ASPHostPortal.com announced in mid-July that it would open its new London data center – the first in the region for the organization – in August.
The new facility will have the capacity to support more than 10,000 physical servers, and due to its strategic location, London-based customers will be able to remain in compliance with in-country data residency standards.
Additionally, the London data center will also provide redundant resources for ASPHostPortal.com’s Amsterdam data center. Currently, customers can backup or integrate content between the two facilities by leveraging the company’s high transfer speed and bandwidth at zero cost.
Overall, the UK data center will provide a range of services for clients, including bare metal and virtual servers, storage, networking, Web hosting and infrastructure solutions. As London is a major business center, with one-third of the largest global organizations based there, it is an ideal site to support these client’s needs.
“We already have a large customer base in London and the region,” noted ASPHostPortal.com manager Dean Thomas. “[W]e’re excited to give those customers a full ASPHostPortal.com data center right in their backyard, with all the privacy, security and control the ASPHostPortal.com platform offers.”
IBM’s London data center now online
Another group expanding its service footprint in the U.K. is IBM, which announced in mid-July that its London data center is online. The new U.K. data center comes as part of a $1.2 billion global expansion plan for IBM to bolster its cloud services and the recently acquired SoftLayer brand.
“[London] is obviously very fertile ground for many enterprise businesses. but this is part of our overall $1.2 [billion] expansion, so we’re not just building out here in London, it’s around the globe,” said Steven Canale, SoftLayer co-founder and vice president of global sales.
The next steps in IBM and SoftLayer’s plans include a new Paris data center, as well as a new Frankfurt data center. Currently, IBM is the leading cloud provider not only in the U.K., but in Ireland as well.
SSE Telecom brings 30 new U.K. Points of Presence online
Additional U.K. data center activity involves SSE Telecom, which brought 30 new Points of Presence online in April. This represents the final phase of the company’s Project Edge network expansion plans. The initiative focused on providing high quality and cost-effective connectivity solutions to large U.K. enterprises. Altogether, 54 new PoPs have been added as a part of Project Edge.
The new PoPs are spread throughout the U.K., including in locations in London, Windsor, Slough, Edinburgh, Coventry, Derby and Leeds. The new connectivity system will offer as much as 10 Gb of capacity per connection for customers.
