Stellium Datacenters, a Tier III+ co-location data centre operator with three sites in Newcastle, has completed a £30 million investment round that it says will be used to fund growth and accelerate fit-out of the facilities.
Its existing Stellium 1 data centre is 4,250 square metres and divided into four 2MW IT data halls. It can deliver uniform IT rack solutions from 4kW, with local capability of 34kW per rack. It has 80MVA power via four 20MVA 11kV feeds to two dedicated SSE switch-rooms, with scalability up to 120MVA, the company said.
(Stellium 2 is 3,600, Stellium 3 2,400 square metres).
The company’s data centres comply with Tier III+ requirements for datacenter design, including concurrent maintainability, diverse engineering, and avoidance of single points of failure
The funding round follows the decision by Dublin’s Aqua Comms, a fibre-optic cable network operator, to select Stellium as a hub for data transmitted between the US, UK, and Europe on the North Atlantic Loop, its newest transatlantic network.
Noel Meaney, Stellium Datacenters’ CEO said: “We believe we are well positioned to serve hyperscale and wholesale companies looking to harness the speed and resiliency of the newest subsea network linking the United States, United Kingdom and Europe, as well as local customers who require data centre services within the UK.”
Today’s funding comes from mid-market private equity fund Tiger Infrastructure Partners, whose MD, Alessandro Boninsegna, said: “Stellium’s management has a proven track record in building critical infrastructure for the digital economy… Stellium has an existing asset base with all these elements and access to the newest fibre networks in the Northeast of England which makes it an exciting new data hub away from the London area. We and our partners at Eram Capital look forward to providing the business with our experience and resources for further growth.”
Stellium Datacenters hopes to attract
- “Global technology, media and telecommunications
- Major corporate enterprises
- Central UK government departments
- Major service providers and outsourcers
- Local government, academia and SMEs
- Start-up and entrepreneurial organisations”
The company, founded in 2016, says its 40 kilometre OPEN Metro Fibre Network will become a “super aggregation point for the major public cloud players as well as a natural home for the peering points that are prevalent in the UK public sector, including the NHS National Network (N3), the Public Services Network (PSN) and the JANET network for UK academia.
(The network includes access to BT exchanges for the use of the BT Openreach network and co-located splice chambers to facilitate in-the-field fibre interconnects).
Aqua Comms worked with Facebook, Google and Denmark’s Bulk Infrastructure, to develop the HAVFRUE cable system, and is the operator of this new high-speed cable. It calls the fibre pairs that it owns “America Connect-2 (AEC-2)”, and is also laying a cable across the North Sea running from Newcastle, to Denmark called North Sea Connect.
“Between them [these and another cable], these cables will create a series of ring-based structures between North America and Northern Europe that we call the ‘’North Atlantic Loop’, the Irish company explains on its website.