Newcastle to become home to major data centre campus to meet firms’ cloud needs

A major data centre campus is set to open in Newcastle that its owners boast is the largest of its kind in the UK.

The venture has been formed by Noel Meaney, who has been involved in prior projects including Citadel100 Datacenters, euNetworks and Seafibre Networks, and he said the site had been developed in response to the ever-growing demand for high-quality data centre services in the UK.

“We are in an age when the datacenter has become a powerhouse of modern business,” he said.
“Datacenters are the hub of modern business operations and can no longer be viewed simply as a commodity. Instead, they have evolved to become a strategic business asset.”

The campus has its own dedicated power supply from an adjacent National Grid Interconnector, and is connected to the wider internet via a dedicated 40km metro fibre network in Newcastle.

The firm said having these features ensures the data centres can provide low-latency, high-capacity connectivity to London, Europe and the US that businesses of all types are now seeking. It also boasts a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.16.

“To future-proof this asset, datacenters need guaranteed cost-effective power, modern agile engineering, and high-capacity, resilient connectivity,” added Meaney.

“They also need to be scalable, flexible and operationally robust. We have dedicated our resources to ensure that Stellium’s datacenters have all of these attributes, as well as being part of a wider technology ecosystem.”

Nick Forbes, leader of Newcastle City Council welcomed the investment of the company into the city, saying it underlined the cities digital focus. “Newcastle and the North East is a hotbed for digital innovation, and this announcement cements our position as the fastest growing tech sector outside of London,” he said.

Newcastle is home to software firm Sage and as an outsourcing delivery centre for Accenture and HPE.