Keysource has successfully completed a critical upgrade for The Medical Protection Society (MPS) at its on-premise data centre in Leeds. This latest project builds on a 17-year relationship between the two businesses, during which Keysource has provided full support across MPS’ technical estate.
The Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) after a competitive process, has chosen Keysource, the global data centre and critical environment specialist, to provide ongoing maintenance and emergency response service for the existing and new critical data centre plant and infrastructure at its STFC Daresbury Laboratory Data centre facility in Warrington.
Under the terms of the maintenance and support agreement, Keysource will provide coordinated, planned preventative maintenance (PPM) along with a 24×7 help desk and technical response and emergency response to site in the event of any issues. Regulatory compliance will be ensured, and manufacturer warranties maintained and managed where applicable.
The contract award follows on from the recent completion by Keysource of the data centre upgrade at the Daresbury Laboratory facility. That project involved supporting the live operation upgrade of the data centre facility which includes the lifecycle replacement of critical power, cooling and protection systems. This enabled collaboration with STFC to plan the works and mitigate risk to the high-performance computing load which remained available throughout the upgrade.
Jon Healy, Operations Director at Keysource, said: “STFC carries out research in science and engineering, and funds UK research and innovation in areas including particle physics, nuclear physics, space science and astronomy. As such, the security of its data is key and we are pleased to be supporting them in achieving their objectives of resilience and sustainability.”
The global pandemic has accelerated widespread digital transformation for businesses of all sizes. This has meant a greater need for remote working and collaborative practices which in turn means an increase in demand for having data and services ‘in the cloud’ which has now become a necessity. The question is how can organisations best manage this?
The emergence of cloud, hype and media attention has put a spotlight on Edge as the industry’s next big thing and the enabler to our autonomous and connected future. In recent years, there has been a ‘decentralisation’ of data generation, and advances in new technologies and the IoT, fuelled by 5G, have driven the need for processing and storing data with location in mind – to the edge.
IT aside, the vast majority of power usage in a data centre is due to cooling and the need to relocate heat away from the CPU. Traditionally, air cooling is the go-to solution and makes up the vast majority of cooling solutions in the data centre world.
This year’s State of the Industry Report is designed to give an insight into the decisions and considerations that UK IT directors and senior decision makers in the data centre industry are making, which in turn are influencing the market.
The Keysource 2020 State of the Industry Report, unsurprisingly, is dominated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the technology changes and challenges that it has brought to business and its effect on people’s ability to work, their priorities and decision-making processes.
The data centre sector is continuing to experience a significant period of growth which is being driven by advances in technology and the need to support increasing user demand, as well as an exponential explosion in data.
In the years since the launch of the BREEAM UK Data Centres scheme, the industry has changed dramatically with new metrics, standards, and best practices. As a result, BREEAM set out to determine how the scheme could evolve to address these new sustainability challenges faced by data centres all over the world.