Birmingham - a Next
generation Digital City
The City of Birmingham is the second biggest city in the UK and has a population of just over one million people and the wider West Midlands region has a population of 5.3 million.Birmingham is a city built on innovation and technology and, today, is also home to a dynamic creative and service industry. Whilst still having a considerable manufacturing base, the city boasts a rapidly expanding financial and service sector, has become a fast-growing centre for hi-tech industry.
The 2008 European Cities Entrepreneurship Ranking report (ECER) placed Birmingham above London as the top UK business environment, and above European locations including Paris, Rome, Madrid and Berlin. Birmingham is the economic hub of the West Midlands with 31,000 companies and an available workforce of 2.5 million people.
Birmingham now has the largest professional services sector outside London, employing over 90,000 people. The city has 200 law firms, 19 out of the top 20 British accountancies, 50 major property services firms and Europe’s second largest insurance market.
The City is investing some £20 billion in one of the boldest 21st Century regeneration plans that include the New Street Gateway, City Park, the £25 million Digital Media Academy and the New Library of Birmingham, set to be the hub of the region’s knowledge economy, all of which will be underpinned by a first class digital infrastructure.
A Science and Knowledge City
Birmingham is one of six cities nominated by Government as a science city, with a focus on medical, transport, manufacturing and digital applications. There are a number of large capital projects planned, focused on increasing the potential of the knowledge base; with the biggest of these projects being the Science City Research Alliance. Led by the University of Birmingham and Warwick University, £57 million has been invested in world-class R&D facilities leveraging over £29 million investment, with over 80 academics engaged in 6 projects.
Birmingham’s three universities, The University of Birmingham, Aston University and Birmingham City University, together have over 17,000 new graduates each year. Over 68,000 students are in higher education in the city.
Birmingham now receives the fastest growing number of university applications of any UK city. It is the most popular big city for undergraduates with applications up 13% in 2009, and has more research students than any other major UK city.
Birmingham has a strong research base and facilities, notably Birmingham Science Park Aston, which is a high-spec destination for both new and established knowledge-based businesses; and the University of Birmingham Research Park, which offers purpose-built accommodation to companies and projects seeking to work with the University in research, development or training. Birmingham is a leader in the nanotechnology and photonics clusters.
Life Sciences and Medical
There are significant collaborations between the University of Birmingham and the majority of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline; Lilly; Pfizer; UCB Celltech; AstraZeneca; Bayer and Novartis.Birmingham hosts one of the largest clinical trials clusters in the UK at the University of Birmingham and the first Cancer Research UK national children’s cancer trials team. The wider West Midlands region has over 500 medical technology companies, more than any other UK region.
Birmingham’s £545 million acute Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which opened in June 2010, is one of the biggest buildings in the UK to have a 3D virtual environment on the hospital’s intranet for staff training and to provide scenario based training for fire drills, major incidents and cardiac teams, as well as a virtual ward way finding system for patients and visitors. The way finder integrates with the hospital’s self check-in system and allows people to view routes on the internet before they come into the hospital.
The dce Central Exchange data centre provides a collaborative medical technology hub, connecting regional medical institutions to those in other major European and US cities. It also offers a high availability, technology archive store and cloud hub for medical research, large scale health-data monitoring and analysis.
Financial Services
The dce Central Exchange data centre will provide a low latency high availability hub for banks across the UK and Europe.
A number of financial operations are leading the drive to improve operational efficiency through new and flexible working practices. Deutsche Bank joins a comprehensive range of banking and financial services within the West Midlands: the generalist providers include all the key four British banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and RBS-NatWest).
The mid-tier providers are among others AIB, Bank of Ireland and NAB/ Yorkshire Bank. Investment banks and specialist providers, meanwhile, include NM Rothschild & Co, Islamic Bank of Britain, Arbuthnot Banking, Goldman Sachs & Co and Unity Trust Bank.
As well as offering low latency high speed fibre access routes to every major internet exchange in Europe, dce Central Exchange will operate as a Point of Presence and interconnect site for multiple major international tier 1 network providers.
“Birmingham offers a business friendly and
supportive community. It has good telecoms
facilities which helps with the international
operations’’
Jason Ang, Vice President, Deutsche Bank
“The 2008 European Cities Entrepreneurship Ranking report (ECER) placed Birmingham above London as the top UK business environment, and above European locations including Paris, Rome, Madrid and Berlin. Birmingham is recognised as one of the world’s top 21 ‘Intelligent Communities’ by global think-tank, The Intelligent Community Forum. Birmingham is the only UK city to be included and only one of four European cities to make the coveted top Smart 21 2011.”
“Birmingham is pioneering the high speed rail revolution with the construction of the London to Birmingham rail link (HS2) due to start in 2017, taking approximately 8 years to complete. HS2 will provide direct services between Birmingham city centre, Birmingham Interchange (situated next to the NEC and Airport) and London reducing travel times to 48 and 39 minutes respectively.”
Birmingham’s
Digital Economy
Birmingham’s digital economy has grown significantly in the past decade and the city centre is home to global digital and Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) companies including IBM, Capgemini, Fujitsu, EDS, Northrop Grumman, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, QinetiQ, LogicaCMG, AT&T and Ricoh. Furthermore the city has grown as a key hub for animation, TV production, computer games and other interactive forms of digital media.
The growth of the digital economy has been supported by Digital Birmingham, a partnership of over 50 organisations including Cisco, Centro, Virgin and the city’s three universities. The partnership was initially
formed in 2006 and acts as an important link between the public and private sectors. The main objective of Digital Birmingham is to promote collaboration between suppliers and end users of digital technology and a key initiative has been to create “Digital Districts” across the city with access to the latest fibre optic and 4G wireless communications technology. Such infrastructure and connectivity needs to be supported by a “digital Gateway” such as the dce Central Exchange data centre in order that Birmingham can benefit fully from the continued development of the digital economy.
As such the city will be strategically positioned to accommodate the exponential growth in decentralised data processing and cloud computing across Europe. dce Central Exchange is ideally positioned to operate both to back-up existing UK data centre concentrations in London and Manchester and on a pan-European basis via its high speed connectivity to cities such as Amsterdam, Paris and Frankfurt.
global Connectivity hub
dce Central Exchange benefits from direct connectivity onto multiple diverse dark fibre pan-European and global networks providing high speed, resilient next generation connectivity to the data centre and its tenants.
Additionally on a local level dce Central Exchange will be directly connected onto a dual metropolitan fibre ring network around Birmingham, allowing businesses and public sector organisations based within the Birmingham city region to benefit from high availability, low latency connectivity to major European cities including London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Madrid and East Coast USA cities such as New York and Boston.
The dce Central Exchange facility will have a local direct fibre access point onto the Colt Global Fibre Backbone among others. This will provide dce access to the Colt pan-European network delivering high speed, fibre connectivity to 18,000 buildings in 20 countries along with fibre access to over 19 existing data centres which operate principally as internet exchanges and network operation centres.
dce Central Exchange will also interconnect with Hibernia Atlantic and this will give the facility high speed access across to the dce Belfast data centre which in turn connects directly onto Project Kelvin, Europe’s fastest direct fibre optic route to New York and Boston
About dce
(Data City Exchange)
Data City Exchange (dce) is a provider and operator of serviced data centre space across multiple locations to the major corporate, government and carrier markets. Our unique modular Evo-POD™ design and bespoke fit out solutions ensure that we deliver our clients a truly best of breeds solution that is tailor made to specifically match our client’s data centre requirements.
The founding partners of dce have combined experience of in excess of 35 years in the telecoms industry, working for or in partnership with WorldCom International (now Verizon), Cable & Wireless, ntl:telewest (now Virgin Media), Avaya/Nortel, Fibrenet, GE Network Solutions and Network Designers in the design and delivery of data centres, call centres and fibre-optic networks across Europe and the Rest of the World.
dce is changing the face of data centre provision in the UK and Ireland. The phase 1 rollout of dce campuses incorporates 260,000 square feet of high security, fully interconnected data centres in 2 geographically dispersed locations, Belfast and Birmingham. Phase 2 expansion plans include Wirral, Bristol, Dublin, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean.
dce will be supported by key strategic partners, including Colt, Hibernia Atlantic, Pivot 3 and Oracle. These partners work with dce in order to to mitigate specific locational risks, deliver true best in class solutions to the dce client base and ensure the company has a first class platform for growth in a sustainable manner on a global scale. The dce design incorporates individual, secure, resilient data centre Evo-POD™ modules fitted out to bespoke customer specification and securely housed within a superstructure holding facility. The turnkey Evo-POD™ modules are available on a managed or unmanaged long term lease basis and support mixed density racking solutions, with cooling density provided to the POD as a whole rather than a rack by rack basis.
dce Central Exchange
Modular data centre campus
dce Central Exchange is a major sustainable data centre facility incorporating the innovative dce Evo-POD™ data centre modules. This highly efficient design offers clients access to a “data centre within a data centre” environment and features individual, secure data centre modules housed in a secure superstructure and directly connected to resilient, low-latency, dark fibre pan-European and global fibre networks.
Each dce data centre has been designed to provide the most environmentally friendly data centres in Europe with a target PUE level 1.16, rainwater harvesting, LEED platinum construction and use of renewable energy sources where possible. The dce Evo-POD™ modules are constructed using recyclable materials to facilitate the renewal and recycling of client modules as required at the end of lifecycle.
dce Central Exchange benefits from direct connectivity onto multiple, diverse dark fibre networks providing high-speed, resilient network access to the data centre and its tenants. On a local level Central Exchange directly connects to dual metropolitan fibre ring networks around Birmingham. Businesses and public sector organisations based within the city can benefit from high availability, low latency connectivity to major European cities including London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and East Coast USA cities such as New York and Boston.
As the UK’s 2nd city and already significant European Professional Services and Digital industry location, Birmingham is a key dce strategic hub location. The dce Central Exchange facility provides a cooling capacity of up to 10 megawatts of mixed density commercial data centre space.
SECURiTy • Perimeter Fence and Landscaped Bund • Single Site Perimeter Entry Point- manned 24 x 7 • 24 x 7 managed reception • Internal and external CCTV
monitoring and recording • Monitored and controlled
permitted working zones • Biometric access control as
standard throughout campus building
• Blast protection
• 24 x 7 Remote building, module and network monitoring • Secure covered loading bay
and lorry access
• Secure on-site car parking CooLiNg • Free Air Adaptive Cooling n+2 • DX backup n+1 • 24 x 7 monitoring and alerts on cooling PoWER • Dual rings and dedicated substations • Planned Biomas facility • Diesel Generator n+2 backup • UPS n+2 backup • Low voltage lighting • Comprehensive Building
Management Software System • Branch Circuit Power
Monitoring
FiRE DETECTioN AND SUPPRESSioN
• HSSD ( High Sensitivity Smoke Detection) throughout POD and main campus building
• Inert gas fire suppression in all areas of POD and main campus building
• Early warning monitoring and alert systems in place
CoMMUNiCATioNS • Redundant dark fibre
connectivity
• Direct fibre access onto dce global fibre footprint • Multiple carrier availability • Local open access fibre
network availability for last mile fibre access to nearby office sites
gENERAL FACiLiTiES
• Hot desk zone, meeting rooms, video conference zone and private office availability • Disposal (recycle) points • Technical build rooms
on each floor
dce Central Exchange Campus
Environmentally friendly design and green data centre deployment are at the heart of the dce Central Exchange solution.
The dce Central Exchange facility incorporates: • LEED platinum building design and construction • Rainwater Harvesting
• Renewable and Recyclable construction materials • Evaporative Air Cooling technology options
• Unique modular dce Evo-POD™ deployment reduces operating costs by up to 92%
• Facility designed to deliver target PUE of 1.16
• Innovative bespoke carbon footprint and power usage reduction technologies
• Renewable power source availability at all dce sites including wind, solar fuel cell, hydro and CHP biomass
• Geothermal Cooling Availability
Data centre
green credentials
The dce Central Exchange data centre incorporates individual, secure dce Evo-POD™ modules housed within a purpose built, secure superstructure data centre which delivers world class efficiency and low carbon, sustainable data centre solutions.
The Evo-POD™ can house up to 24, 48 or 96 data racks depending on the power and capacity requirements of the end user and can support a mixed density of data racks, i.e. it is possible to vary the power distribution to individual racks within a pod. This creates a future proof solution with the ability to upgrade power and cooling capacity as technology and customer demands
continue to develop.
The Evo-POD™ components are factory built and assembled on site to form standard, high quality, repeatable modules fully fitted out ready for deployment of customer’s technical equipment
dce Modular Evo-PoD
™
overview
Key Features • Bespoke standalone customer data centre module • 96 or 48 rack deployment capacity per Evo-POD™ • Free air cooling airflow management solution or liquid cooled option • Multiple enhanced security options for Evo-POD™ and racks • Hot and Cold Aisle efficient cooling design • Mixed density server configurations supported • Renewable and recyclable components • Purpose built secure superstructure to house the Evo-POD™ • Can be deployed as external standalone rapid deployment data centres at remote sites linked into main dce campus sites
European Cloud Computing
and Virtualisation Hub
dce is working closely with storage and software platform vendors to reduce the size of application footprints within each POD deployment. The Evo-POD™ is available as a preconfigured solution based on several major platform vendors including Oracle, VMware and Pivot3.
Partnering with Oracle has enabled dce to offer world class bespoke virtualisation and storage solutions. The tailored virtualisation of applications allows customers to further reduce their carbon footprint by reducing the number of equipment racks needed to run their business processes. When coupled with the energy efficiency savings of the dce Evo-POD™ major reductions of operating costs can be achieved from day one deployment.
Customers can also choose from a range of off the shelf packaged deployments to help scale out their applications such as “storage as a service” and “database as a service”. These solutions have been tailored for vertical markets and so bespoke configurations for use within local government, media and finance are available.
Through its strategic partnership with Pivot3, dce will deliver a range of virtual business applications. The Pivot3 vSTAC VDI appliances are purpose-built to fill the gap in the VDI “commercial” market segment. They unify the delivery of virtualized desktops with scale-out SAN storage across simple to consume commodity appliances. This allows customers to have the benefits of enterprise-class SAN storage while eliminating the barriers of cost and complexity.
Data City Exchange
35 Dover Street Mayfair London W1S 4NQ Tel: 0844 579 3973 Fax: 0844 579 3974 Email: [email protected] www.datacityexchange.com
All rights reserved. Copyright©™ Data City Exchange Holdings Ltd
“Oracle are delighted to work with dce, their unique data centre design concepts and power efficiency model work hand in glove with Oracle’s storage portfolio. Together we can provide ‘best in class’ data management facilities and infrastructure to support any companies immediate and future requirements.”
Jonathan Hebbes, EMEA Sales Director, Oracle Corporation
“We are excited to be working with dce as our Pivot3 vSTAC™
appliances are a perfect “Green” complement to the dce Evo-Pod™.
Pivot3’s unified shared storage and virtual server arrays deliver unprecedented simplicity, scalability and savings; including significant eco-friendly savings of around 40% on power and cooling alone.”
