Daisy invests £1m in bomb proof data centre

NORTH West business communications specialist Daisy Group has invested £1m in a state-of-the art data centre in the former Bank of Engaldn gold bullion vault in Manchester city centre.

The listed company, which has its headquarters in Nelson, Lancashire, said the new ultra-secure facility, is its most advanced and also most energy efficient in its portfolio.

The company, which counts Manchester Airports Group, retailer HMV, and media group Trinity Mirror, among its data clients, has invested in new capacity amid growing demand from business customers for data storage as more switch to cloud computing systems.

The new centre is 25 feet underground and as well as being protected by a 12 tonne door, is surrounded by two-metre thick granite walls and a 60cm bomb blast corridor. It is also continuously monitored by 70 CCTV cameras and staffed 24 hours a day all year round.

Located at the heart of Manchester, it is able to acccess 1.2 MW of power from the National Grid – the equivalent usage of 300 households. The servers are cooled by six giant cooling units with the same capacity as 2,000 domestic fridges.

Will Kennedy, corporate sales director at Daisy said: “This investment comes at an incredibly exciting time for Daisy. The new facilities and space that we have created in our Manchester data centre mean that we are able to open up our world-class hosting solutions to any kind of business, large or small, that require secure and instant access to their data and applications.

“Millions of pounds worth of transactions take place online every day and it is facilities like ours that make this possible. We’ve all heard the horror stories and seen the millions wiped off the value of companies when technology lets them down, our data centres offer a cast iron guarantee of absolute security, power and 100% availability.”