Acquisition of additional new building means M247 has plenty of room to expand

Described by Technical Director Chris Byrd as a deal that was “too good to miss” we are pleased to announce that we have purchased a new building, right next door to our existing datacentre, that will give us lots of room to expand. Since 2009, our existing building (DC1) has housed full-time 24 x 7 technical support, administration and management staff with a state of the art datacentre being housed on a separate floor. Now this new additional building (DC2) offers lots of potential for growth and development into new areas.

Operations Director Jonathan Buckle says “within just a very short time we’ve almost reached capacity on our existing datafloor here in Manchester and in other datacentres around Europe where we own infrastructure. Since the Internet and Data Markets are still growing at an incredible rate while the property market has at best plateaued, it’s obvious that rather than rent more space we just had to buy this new building”. The additional building will allow us to grow by at least a factor of 5 and give our server co-location offerings a huge boost in sales potential.

Managed Internet Services within the datacentre are very much in demand and there are deals already in the pipeline to begin to fill up the new datafloor once it comes on-stream in the very near future.

“The challenge now is to improve on what we’ve learned from our early days experience with infrastructure in a London datacentre and then subsequently moving to Manchester and building our own flagship datacentre. This development made us more efficient and competitive in the process” says Jonathan Buckle. “Our existing Manchester datacentre is already one of the most efficient in the whole of Europe and we are probably already the largest privately owned network provider in the UK with thousands of customers in every time zone”. The new datacentre design is targeting a PuE of just 1.15, quite an aim considering that we already has an enviably green track record on energy efficiency with our main datacentre measuring just 1.18 PuE as supported by granular records taken every five minutes and stretching back over 18 months.

Our new building will mean that customers will soon be able to enjoy the spacious surrounds which boasts a location with free and secure parking just a very short distance from the motorway system and a stone’s throw away from Media City. This extra space and capacity also means that we can offer additional managed services such as disaster recovery and bespoke accommodation for our larger managed services clients and the luxury of more space will allow us to move servers around to take advantage of the highly competitive connectivity and power supply at our Manchester base. It’s hardly surprising that the news of rapid growth is also creating interest with the rich seam of local employees with good computer and network skills. By the time the new datacentre is fully operational, we anticipate having to double our technical workforce to approximately 60.

Asked what other changes this new building will bring, Chris Byrd said “ Targeting high bandwidth users requiring connectivity and the rapidly expanding colocation market, the new datacentre will house at least 300 racks to which we will be able to deliver 32 amp A + B with an N+1 UPS set up. Importantly, the new datacentre will have a carrier neutral proposition with 60Gbps of activated connectivity capacity including an advanced 10Gbps IP and MPLS network connected directly to 7 of the world's largest and most important Internet exchanges via a resilient European network ring spanning Manchester, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris and Belgium with a full London bypass. We also have direct peering relationships with 70% of all the European ISPs. Our recent investment and massive capacity positions us with practically unlimited growth potential for many years into the future.”