Adapting to the client

In early 2014, Qube identified an opportunity to capitalise on market growth trends and the need for flexibility in data centre requirements. Although its centres across Europe and the US presented excellent facilities, they were not equipped with the flexibility to quickly increase services in line with customer demand.

The forthcoming demand was highlighted in an analysis from Frost & Sullivan’s 2014 research in the European Data Centre Services Market, that showed managed hosting revenues will increase from $2.01 billion to $4.90 billion by 2018.

Qube’s requirements were driven by the demands of their clients for a data centre with excellent connectivity, the ability to upscale quickly and to be located at least 40 miles from any current data centres in use, to reduce business continuity risks.

Selecting the right provider
Qube reviewed the data centre market to find an organisation with facilities to suit their requirements. As this was a first for Qube, having not outsourced data centre services before, thorough research was undertaken to find a partner that could offer the latest advanced security, with excellent infrastructure and be able to upscale quickly to ensure it met long term needs.

Jamie Donnelly, Qube Managed Services Managing Director explains, “We looked at several providers to partner with, but found Infinity was the only one that truly met our needs. The facilities at Infinity Slough are not only exceptional, but also fitted our physical security requirements.

“As an agile business, we also needed a partner that is able to flex with our requirements, scaling the service as and when we need it.”

Qube selected award-winning Infinity with a focus on its data centre facilities in Slough, offering a true partnership enabling growth and maximising the value which Qube provides its clients. The resilient, efficient and secure data centre has minimal energy costs and carbon footprint and is supported via a comprehensive range of smart services covering migration, installation, remote hands and cross connects.

With Qube in a growth phase, Infinity’s Infinite Data Centre product provides the flexibility to grow and shrink the data centre footprint in tune with the changes in the IT estate. This is especially important for Qube as many of its clients’ IT estates were migrated from in-house facilities, consolidated or virtualised.

Infinity Slough
Infinity’s Slough data centre supports a broad range of flexible products and provides a range of pre-built facilities ready for immediate occupation. It offers individual racks, private suites, scalable halls and dedicated data centres supported by innovative cooling techniques. Its halls provide a standard power density of 8.5 – 10kW per rack and our modular, dynamic chilled water cooling system delivers a market leading PUE of 1.22. It is highly resilient with no single points of failure.

Stuart Sutton, CEO of Infinity says, “We see the data centre as a fully integrated part of the overall IT solution, not just the building where it resides and our Infinite Data Centre proposition provides evidence of our commitment to this. Our flexible data centre solutions enable our channel partners to truly add value to their customers.
“Infinity Slough provides 9,200 m2 of technical space and is supported by 34MVA delivered via a dedicated on-site primary sub-station. Quoted by many as “the best data centre in the UK market at the moment”, its state of the art design draws on all our previous experience. Everything about this data centre is truly world-class.”

Working together
Jamie Donnelly, Qube Managed Services Managing Director, plans to increase its partnership with Infinity to take the offering further. The company has plans to use the Infinity data centre to mirror storage and services in other locations, increasing its capacity significantly from the initial deployment.

“Expanding our data centre facilities will allow us to grow further and cater for more clients,” he says. “When choosing a new data centre partner we first had to take into account our clients’ needs. We identified that more and more of our clients are looking for data centre facilities that offer a fully adjustable service, with excellent security and the ability to up-scale quickly.

“We are an agile business and look for similar organisations we can scale with, and Infinity was the perfect choice. We are planning to increase the number of racks further and ultimately we plan to use Infinity to mirror our London centre.

“Infinity has an excellent track record of designing and building data centres that support major brands across the most demanding of sectors and its infrastructure is extremely resilient, having an unblemished service record. Along with the excellent security, which integrates into our own access management systems, Infinity Slough provides Qube with the ultimate peace of mind, knowing that we are receiving the best service possible, with excellent facilities and in a completely safe environment.”