A new kind of datacentre, claiming to be Scotland's largest and most technologically advanced has completed initial construction and is expected to complete its fit out in May next year, operators DataVita have said.
Based at Newhouse on the M8 between Glasgow and Edinburgh, the £200 million Fortis project is expected to create around 50 high-value skilled jobs over the next five years. With a footprint of 100,000 square foot, the 2000-rack facility will offer "a range of innovative, agile datacentre and cloud services. These will be aimed at private and public sector customers who are looking to store their data securely while reducing the financial and environmental costs."
Although Scotland already has several large-scale databases, DataVita say that the new energy-efficient facility represents a step change for the burgeoning data storage and processing industry being the first to be entirely purpose-built with state-of-the-art cooling systems - a vital part of the business case for the project given the need to keep the cost of cooling the massed ranks of servers. The backers claim that Scotland’s cool climate will help customers achieve up to 40% reduction in power costs and up to 95% reduction in carbon emissions.
Gareth Lush, commercial director at DataVita said: “Scotland is most definitely ready for a next-generation datacentre, and DataVita will put Scotland on the global datacentre map. We have a thriving IT industry but we are lacking the datacentres to support this fully, resulting in valuable investment and jobs going outside of Scotland. DataVita will offer Scotland’s first “cloud enabled” datacentre that will allow customers to easily mix traditional datacentre services with the cloud and help our customers meet security and regulatory requirements. Planning permission has been granted for other new datacentres in Scotland in the past, but it is important to highlight that Fortis is already a reality – the building is complete, our fit out works are in the final stage, and the latest technology is already in place.
“The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) at Fortis is 1.18, meaning that the average public sector organisation could save around £200,000 annually on energy costs alone by moving away from trying to run inefficient in-house computer rooms to hosting their IT equipment with DataVita – and that’s before you look at other potential savings from space and staff time being freed up.”
“It is also unprecedented in terms of quality and security – it will be the first datacentre in Scotland to achieve Tier III certification from The Uptime Institute for design, construction and sustainable operations.”
Polly Purvis, CEO of ScotlandIS, the trade body for the digital technologies industry, said: "DataVita has ambitious plans to harness renewable energy for its new data centre. The combination of renewable energy resources, political stability and naturally cool ambient temperatures make Scotland a compelling location for secure data storage, and it’s good to see the market expanding.”
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