SSE Enterprise Boost UK Capacity with 5 Optical-Enabled Datacentres

SSE Enterprise Telecoms (SSEET) claims to have found a disparity in the connectivity needs of London-based UK business verses businesses in regional towns. In response they’ve today launched five new optical-enabled data centres in Northampton, Milton Keynes, Hemel, Stickley Park and Newport, Wales to help.

At present the operator is currently in the process of expanding their optical fibre network to cater for a further 180,000 UK business post codes, which they’re doing by unbundling another 177 BT exchanges (so far 51 of these have been completed) via their Edge 3 rollout programme (here). The operator’s 12km+ “dark-fibre like” network is often said to be capable of delivering up to 100Gbps to each exchange.

Despite this their latest analysis is predicting an expected growth of 88% in network demand that will come from London businesses in the next year (hence why 60% of the Edge 3 work is concentrated in the London area). However the research also predicts a 20% increase in core network capacity demand from businesses in regional UK towns over the next two years (i.e. regional businesses want direct access to datacentres).

In response, the operator is launching five geographically spread optical-enabled data centres, serving areas where on-net access is in high demand.

The Five Regional Datacentres
* Northampton (Node 4)
* Milton Keynes (Pulsant)
* Hemel (Gyron, Centro)
* Stockley Park (Virtus 5)
* Newport, Wales (Next Gen Data)

Colin Sempill, CEO of SSEET, said:

“We’re continually investing in our customers’ needs, providing the most robust services that their businesses require. Whether that’s increasing our connectivity footprint by deploying our five new optical-enabled data centres in high demand regional blackspots or investing to provide densification solutions for businesses in metro city areas like London.

As enterprises respond to emerging technology trends and with the rise of the Internet of Things, they’re relying on high capacity networks to fuel the future of Industry 4.0. Our recent network investment supports this by ensuring we’re in the best position to serve our customers both now and in the future.”

Apparently the main drivers of this on-net data increase stem from a desire to reduce IT estate costs and an increase in cloud adoption.  The new data centres should thus enable enterprises to access public clouds directly, without the need to procure individual connections into each provider.