Manchester-based ANS Group has been selected as the data centre tenant for the space at The Sharp Project, Manchester’s digital and production complex in Newton Heath.
The company has agreed a 15-year lease on the space and is set to invest £8 million in the data centre over the next three years.
The data centre will house its NationalCloud Infrastructure and Desktop as a Service offering, ANS Group says, as well as secure co-location facilities to house computer systems, data storage and associated components such as telecommunications systems.
The data centre, which may be expanded by another 20,000 square feet to create extra space in the building for a 1,600-rack facility, is due for completion in March 2013. The facility will accommodate a total of 400 racks of varying depths, specific for rack-mountable servers, routers or switches.
“Co-location and rack space packages are available from as little as one unit (1U) to dedicated part or full racks in a ‘carrier-grade’ data centre that offers resilient power, cooling and connectivity backed up with on-site technical staff,” said ANS Group in a statement.
The facility is to be built by Manchester data centre design-and-build specialist firm Sudlows.
“It’s great to be associated with The Sharp Project in this way,” said Paul Sweeney, managing director of ANS group. “From this Tier 3 data centre we can offer our dedicated Infrastructure 3 solution or our hosted NationalCloud infrastructure, both built on Cisco, NetApp, VMware and Microsoft technology commonly known as Flexpod.”
Scott Fletcher, chairman and founder of ANS Group, added that the new facility “will take advantage of all the latest technology, such as fresh-air cooling, and offering high-density racks in the most efficient way possible we have our sights on a PUE of 1.2”.
“To form this long-term partnership with ANS Group is another milestone for The Sharp Project. To be able to offer a purpose-built, state-of-the-art data centre at The Sharp Project is great news," said Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council. "This is yet another example of the public and private sector working together to drive forward our ambition of Manchester becoming a global digital city by 2020.”
