15th February 2017
Scotland’s largest and most energy efficient datacentre has connected to an ultra-fast and resilient network in a landmark partnership.
The Fortis datacentre, which is located near Newhouse in North Lanarkshire is now live through Commsworld’s gigabit capable pure fibre network.
The agreement will enable Scotland’s leading independent network operator to offer the services of the low-energy, renewables powered facility to its 2500 clients, offering a latency performance between Fortis to Glasgow and Edinburgh of one millisecond or less.
Firms that do opt to use Fortis will follow a host of public and private, healthcare and life science sector organisations now seeing their IT operations transformed through the datacentre.
Gareth Lush, commercial director at DataVita, the company set up to operate Fortis, believes that in the current climate, security, speed and resilience are the key factors – and directly led to the decision to appoint Commsworld.
He said: “We were attracted to Commsworld, as they are able to provide a hyper-resilient network that ensures the complete service to clients, many of whom require instant access to highly sensitive and important files – at all times.
“Not only that, they are an independent Scottish firm and excel within their segment of the sector. Partnership working is very important to us, as is supporting the Scottish economy wherever possible – and this is just one example of this.
The datacentre, just off the M8, harnesses Scotland’s cool climate to deliver the highest levels of power efficiency and is powered entirely by renewable energy sources.
The 100,000 sqft, 2000-rack facility is expected to create 50 skilled jobs over five years and DataVita is highlighting to potential customers the scope for a 40% reduction in power costs, and up to 95% reduction in carbon emissions.
Chief executive of Commsworld, Ricky Nicol, said: “In Fortis, Scotland is getting a datacentre befitting the market and I believe its services will have a major positive impact within the business community.
“We’re delighted to be partnering with DataVita on this project – not only to connect Fortis through our network, but also to provide its services to our customers, further enhancing our own offering.
“The term ‘future-proofing’ tends to get overused, but this datacentre will do exactly that for Scotland’s many businesses and organisations, as demand for digital storage services continue to surge.”
Gareth added: “Scotland is most definitely ready for a next-generation datacentre. 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.
