Northampton datacentre under construction for financial services industry

A new datacentre will be opened in Northampton next year to serve the financial services industry and other local businesses.

The datacentre is being built by Node4, which already has datacentres in the Derby and Wakefield areas. Firms including Barclaycard are based in the Northampton area, although Node4 did not say which firms will be using the new datacentre, which is set to open in early 2011.

Node4 said that "two high street banks" have so far signed up to use its data hosting facilities. The site will be around 41,000 sq ft, which is twice the size of Node4's current largest datacentre in Wakefield. It will house multiple servers across around 720 racks.

Northampton was selected as the best location for the firm's fourth datacentre owing to its transport links connecting London and the north, and logistically being located directly in the heart of the UK.

With the economy still unstable and public sector cuts on the horizon, Node4 said both public sector and private sector organisations - including SMEs - would continue to look at outsourcing their data management to further cut their costs.

Andrew Gilbert, managing director of Node4, said: "As with our other datacentres, Northampton will carry a high specification but at sensible prices, meaning that any organisation wanting colocation or managed hosting services can benefit from a quality facility without having to break the budget.”

While the Northampton datacentre is a traditional build facility, other firms have started to go underground. In the quest for resilience, some have even made use of old Cold War nuclear bunkers.