Portugal Fujitsu invests £44m in new data centre near London

The current shortage of data centres in London (see notes to editors 2) will be eased by Fujitsu’s new centre, helping customers to overcome their data centre capacity problems, saving them from the lengthy delays and local planning restrictions involved in building or extending their own facilities.

The new data centre will be used by companies and public bodies in the UK and continental Europe that want an efficient data centre with a low environmental impact, a topic that is of increasing importance to business and government organisations alike.

By redeveloping a brown-field site and refurbishing an existing warehouse, Fujitsu will further reduce the environmental impact compared to a new building on green fields.

The environmental features in the new Fujitsu data centre include the use of low energy evaporation tower to cool the chilled water cooling system when the outside temperature is low. The intelligent cooling system in conjunction with variable speed fans, pumps and heat exchangers significantly reduces the energy used to keep the IT systems cool, saving enough energy to power over 2,000 households every year.

Additionally, Fujitsu will reduce the power consumption of the customer IT systems housed in the data centre through a modernisation programme. Consolidating the IT systems within the data centre, will achieve power consumption and cost savings of up to 50%, compared to current usage. When complete the modernisation programmes will save enough power for up to 4,000 homes each year and making considerable cost savings for business.

In total Fujitsu’s new data centre facility and IT modernisation programmes when complete will each year save enough electricity to power up to 6,000 homes, equivalent to 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and significantly reduce the cost of IT for business.

Martin Provoost, Fujitsu Services’ head of data centres said, “Companies have realised that expanding their data centres to cope with IT growth is expensive and wastes resources. They need lower costs and want their data centres and systems to be efficient and planet friendly. This new Fujitsu data centre provides the capacity the UK needs now and through our modernisation programme with our customers, we will drive out historic inefficiency in IT systems, reduce costs and create a sustainable green data centre environment.”