Keysource, the business critical infrastructure service specialist, has announced it has invested over £250k in people and processes as it formalises the way it provides its services. These changes are in response to market and customer demands, and to support its significant growth both in the UK and Europe. 

As a result it is now the only company in the industry that is offering Consulting, Building and Operational Management services that are all self delivered by an in-house team and can be procured as a standalone or bundled solution. This builds on the company’s 30 years of unrivalled knowledge and experience in designing, building and operating data centres, which has seen it achieve a growth performance of 135% in the past three years.

This is underpinned by the implementation of a comprehensive ERP system and the opening of 24/7 manned service centre located in a highly secure office in Woking. A number of senior professionals have been recruited to join the business including Stephen Whatling, who takes the role of Managing Director of Consultancy and Professional Services (see separate release), and Matt Simmons. Matt joins from Datashare Solutions where he was Head of Managed Services at DSL (part of the Shift F7 Group) which provides a comprehensive suite of cloud-based hosted systems, fully-managed backup and disaster recovery services, IT support and ICT project services.

Commenting on the changes, Mike West, Group Chief Executive at Keysource, said: “The data centre industry is changing and organisations are facing new IT challenges. In many cases traditional data centre design and build solutions are no longer the only, or even the best decision as there are a large number of options and variables. Our consultancy team will help organisations to make the right decisions about their IT and our advice is backed up by our understanding of Total Cost of Ownership issues and our experience in operating data centres.”

Other Contract wins (Consultancy)

Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust has appointed Keysource, the expert in business critical environments, to review its data centre infrastructure. This will involve benchmarking the data centres at each hospital to ensure the significant investment the Trust has made in its IT infrastructure is protected. 

Other contract wins (Operational Management)

Earlier this year The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) announced it had awarded the management of two of its critical data centres to Keysource, as part of the wider strategic implementation of the force’s technology transformation programme. As the Data Centre Management Service (DCMS) provider Keysource is managing assets, capacity, efficiency, certification and compliance, as well as taking responsibility for delivery management and physical security management including access to site, data hall and racks. Operational services including M&E testing and maintenance scheduling, IT smart hands service, Data cabling and IT decommissioning and commissioning services are also part of the remit.

Other contract wins (design and build)

Recent projects include the completion of a new data centre for Jaguar Land Rover, to support its recently completed automated Engine Manufacturing Centre (EMC), where a new engine is built every 39 seconds; and the completion of a new facility for brightsolid, the leading Scottish cloud hosting and data centre provider.

Other contract wins (critical data centre facilities management)

The University of Leicester has appointed Keysource to provide critical data centre facilities management (FM) services. It builds on a six-year relationship which started in 2009 when Keysource designed and built the college’s award winning data centre which they then expanded in 2011, almost doubling it in size.

Under the terms of the new deal Keysource will provide a seamless, responsive and proactive management of the maintenance services for the data centres in line with the University’s own strategic plan. This will include providing specialist auditing and monitoring of energy efficiency levels so that the University can both reduce operational costs and meet carbon footprint targets. The service will be based on a clear framework focussing on data centre best practice, leveraging the ITIL methodology and Keysource’s new CAFM system.