New partnership with IBM to double capacity in brightsolid's online technology business
IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced that it has signed an agreement with UK-based brightsolid online technology - a leading independent provider of online IT services - to design and build a data centre that will double operation capacity. As a result of this business growth initiative, brightsolid has recently signed a Teaming Agreement with IBM to co-sell and co-deliver IBM Services throughout the UK, complementing the growing brightsolid hosting capability.
brightsolid provides cloud-computing services, hosting of critical business applications and network implementation and management from its existing facilities. The new data centre located in Dundee will allow brightsolid to expand their range of offerings and meet the growing demand in the market for completely reliable, secure cloud offerings, in line with their ambitiuous growth plans. In addition to traditional strength in sectors such as the Public Sector and Financial Services, including large public sector organisations and FTSE-100 companies - this expansion allows brightsolid to meet increased demand from growing sectors such as social networking and online gaming.
Additionally, the new data centre solution will take advantage of many of the latest technologies in the industry including being able to support the power and cooling needs of cutting-edge High Performance Computing systems. The innovative data centre will transform the efficiency of brightsolid's business, leading to improved operations and customer cost savings.
"By implementing a scalable solution, IBM has supported us in our ambition to facilitate growth in a prudent manner, as we've chosen to invest in the new data centre because the company has recently experienced significant growth," said Richard Higgs, Managing Director of brightsolid online technology. "By doubling our number of racks and trebling our power capacity, the new facility will enable us to meet growing customer demand for private cloud services from businesses throughout the UK. It was also critical for us that the construction and integration of the new data centre would completely avoid disruption to existing customers."
"IBM worked closley with brightsolid to understand their business requirements and build a data centre solution to meet their specific needs. The solution will involve the re-purposing of approximately 200m2 of currently un-used office space to house an IBM modular data centre. This is designed to accommodate contained cold aisle technology, using air conditioning and raised floors as a cooling infrastructure, which ensures the server racks are kept at optimum temperature in an efficient manner" added Mark Hare, IBM UKI Data Centre Services Specialist.
"IBM won the contract based on their proven delivery history for brightsolid. Last year, IBM upgraded their existing data centre without any downtime. They were the only organisation who tendered that came up with a suitable solution and brightsolid recognised their innovative approach and confidence in handling critical projects."
"The new Teaming Agreement will allow IBM and brightsolid to jointly sell each others value added services and offer innovative Hosted/Cloud solutions to the Scottish market and to businesses across the UK" explained Steven Haddow, IBM Channel Manager in Scotland.