Cost of the capital lures companies to consider alternatives

Data centres based outside of London are taking advantage as businesses weigh up the costs of being based in the capital.

The backlash against London-based data centres continues as providers outside of the city capitalise on the benefits of being based elsewhere in the UK. Companies have cited higher energy costs, possible outages brought about by the 2012 Olympics and terror threats as reasons to look elsewhere when considering data centre sites.

Node4 has attributed much of its success to the fact that its network of data centres is based at locations in Derby, Northampton and Leeds – away from the disadvantages that many of its competitors and their clients have faced. The company’s strategic selection of sites situated close to the UK’s large conurbations has enabled Node4 to become a powerful draw for businesses wanting proximity to be a key priority as they look to outsource their data.

Andrew Gilbert, managing director at Node4 said, “Many new clients we have been speaking to recently have approached us for a solution that will provide a host of benefits over the alternatives in London. Energy costs are spiralling upwards across the UK but with prices in London especially high, a data centre elsewhere is becoming increasingly enticing.

“Every company will have its own requirements when it comes to selecting the location of its data centre but some needs are common for almost all users. Reliability, security and support that enables them to focus on their core business, are all key elements that feature highly on the list of priorities for any company but in today’s impecunious times, the cost of attached to the data centre location will also grow in importance. This isn’t a price war however, rather, an evaluation of high-end cloud-based services that put companies at an advantage.”

Node4 is taking advantage of the increased capacity to build dedicated data centres outside of London by planning new centres in Birmingham and Leicester over coming months that will enable them to further roll out their philosophy of local data centres.

Andrew continued, “The interests of companies are best served through access to a number of regional data centres, where firms can be close by to the physical locations where their data is stored but also have the data replicated across all of the sites. The result is a robust infrastructure that minimises the risk of outages and provides peace of mind.”

ENDS

About Node4

Node4 is a specialist in data centre and communications solutions. Launched in 2004, the company has grown rapidly in the past seven years through its comprehensive service offering and the growth in demand for hosted IT from businesses all over the UK. Its competencies include colocation, managed hosting through dedicated servers and virtualised environments, connectivity, SIP trunking and hosted telephony. It has four state-of-the-art data centre facilities, two located in Derby and one in Leeds and one in Northampton, which offer the latest in security technology, ensuring that even the most mission-critical applications are hosted securely and protected.

The company aims to be one of the UK’s major forces for colocation services in the UK and to this end, provides the highest levels of performance and system availability to its customers throughout the UK. Node4 featured in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 in both 2010 and 2011 and won 1st place for fastest growing Midlands Technology Company in the Deloitte Fast50 and 22nd in the UK. The company also featured in prominent positions in the Deloitte Fast 500 in 2010 and 2011, which recognises fastest-growing technology companies across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Node4’s Managing Director, Andrew Gilbert, was named European Data Centre Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 and Ernst & Young North and Midlands Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2011.

Node4 is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, a Cisco Premier Certified Partner and also won the prestigious Cisco Innovation Award of the Year for the UK and Ireland.

For more information, please visit www.Node4.co.uk

For press enquiries email node4@flamepr.com or contact the Node4 press team on 0203 357 9740