Comtec Power wins contract to deliver state-of-the-art data centre upgrade for new London-based colocation start-up

Comtec Power, a specialist in data centre design and build, Elite Partner to Schneider Electric and Reigate-based Value-Added-Reseller (VAR), has won a contract to provide Start-Up Colo Company IP House with a critical data centre upgrade in London's Docklands.

Once completed, the 16,000ft, carrier-neutral facility will meet the requirements of the Tier III classification, to provide its customers with secure, resilient and ultra-fast colocation data centre services.

Situated next to the City of London and Canary Wharf, IP House is aiming to attract high-value customers in the financial services, gaming and online gambling industries to avail of its high-availability, high-performance and ultra-reliable colocation services. The Uptime Institute rates data centres from Tier I to Tier IV in terms of their systems availability. A Tier III rated data centre has the second most rigorous uptime requirements and is suitable for customers who depend on real-time delivery of products or services for a significant part of their revenue stream.

"We are currently in the initial stage of the data centre build, which will be delivered in two phases by Comtec over the next 18 months." said Vinny Vaghani, Operations Manager of IP House. "Our first data suite is comprised of Schneider Electric's InfraStruxure (ISX) integrated data centre architecture and has 14,000sq ft. of white space with a total of 216 racks - 192 of which will be available for customers when the facility is operational in 2018. Once the second stage is completed towards 2019, we'll have a total of 512 racks with which to service our customers."

London is well known as one of the World's leading data centre hubs, and fears that Brexit would see a decline in growth for outsourced, or hosted data centre services have been downplayed in a new report by 451 Research's Principle Analyst, Penny Jones. 451 predicts that the Multi-tenant-data-centre (MTDC) market will continue to grow throughout 2017, with an additional 423,000 square foot of colocation space estimated to be available by the year end.

Given the staged upgrade of the facility, IP House have opted for a modular, pay-as-you-grow approach to deploying their critical infrastructure, utilising components of Schneider Electrics InfraStruxure (ISX) Data Centre Physical Infrastructure solution, NetShetler SX Racks, Symmetra PX UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), APC by Schneider Electric Switchgear, NetBotz Environmental Monitoring and Intelligent Metered PDU's. All of which will be delivered under the watchful eye of Comtec Power's experienced data centre design and build team.

"Capacity, scalability and footprint were important considerations of the initial design," said Ian Gregg, Data Centre Specialist at Comtec Power. "The modularity offered by Symmetra PX will allow IP House to expand their backup power as both the data centre and business grows. Its power modules and batteries have a smaller footprint than other products available in the market, meaning the space saved translates directly in the data centre, creating more room for customers IT equipment."

"Comtec's expertise in data centre design and build has been unparalleled and invaluable." continued Vinny Vaghani, Operations Manager of IP House. "Their familiarity with Schneider Electric's industry-leading technology and proactive approach to customer support during the initial tender process was one of the key reasons they secured the contract. As a Start-Up business we wanted to acquire and leverage both the experience and expertise of the partners supplying our critical infrastructure. We did our research and found that Comtec had delivered on a number of fantastic data centre projects of similar scale, so we could trust in their 20+ years of expertise and take guidance from them."

"With Comtec, we've always had a single point of contact," he continued. "At every stage of the project we've been able to communicate with senior members of their business and the service they continue to provide us with has been everything we hoped for, and more."

IP House's Docklands Data Centre aims to open doors to new customers in early 2018.