Companies connect to meet data centre demand

Andrew Rowson, partner at Johnson Fellows

Two companies have made a new connection to take advantage of a growing need for major organisations to make significant improvements to their data centres.

Birmingham-based chartered surveyors Johnson Fellows and global IT specialists NextiraOne UK believe that data centres are a growth area as both public and private sector customers need to invest in upgrading and enhancing their facilities to fix inefficiencies and reduce energy costs.

As part of the new enterprise, Johnson Fellows has expanded its building services into architectural design, site appraisal and feasibility study assessment, location research, and project management. NextiraOne focuses on the design and build elements of the data centre, including, power, cooling, M&E, cabling and specialist fit out and migration services.

The partnership has been strengthened by the success of a number of recent customer projects for major NHS, Local Government and financial organisations. Both companies have real synergy in this growing market and now aim to complete at least five more projects together in the next 12 months.

Johnson Fellows and NextiraOne first collaborated on a £5 million scheme to upgrade the IT and communications infrastructure for a major Southern-based NHS Trust, which involved consolidating the IT requirements into one dedicated facility, including a disaster recovery location.

Johnson Fellows designed and project managed the state-of-the-art building and, to avoid disruption while the work was being carried out, NextiraOne laid more than 60 kilometres of new voice and data cabling to keep the systems running as normal. NextiraOne also designed and installed the interior M&E fit-out including air conditioning and in-row chilled water-cooling solutions within the data centre, along with UPS systems, electrical services and standby generators. The new facility is now up and running and is saving the NHS Trust 50% on its energy bill.

Andrew Rowson, partner at Johnson Fellows, said: “Normally, estates or facilities and IT departments wouldn’t communicate until something goes wrong with the project. But by providing that essential ‘conduit’ and working together from the start, we can ensure projects meet the client’s brief and work is carried out with minimal disruption, within budget and to the desired timescales. This is certainly an exciting development for Johnson Fellows and an area which we believe will grow significantly in the next few years.”

Peter Smith, practice leader at NextiraOne, said: “Imperative to any large scale IT project is to keep businesses running as normal throughout any project, and that we cause as little disruption as possible for our customers. We look forward to working with the Johnson Fellows team on many more successful data centre projects.”

NextiraOne is Europe’s leading technology services company partnering with 60,000 customers to provide data centre, unified communications, contact centre and managed services.  For more information, please visit http://www.nextiraone.eu/uk.