Central London data center operator City Lifeline is opening a new data hall to keep up with high demand, as 87% of businesses now use public cloud services.

The new Shoreditch Suite in London’s Tech City will be a multi-phase development which requires a new 11,000 volt sub-station and a 2 Megawatt increase in power to the data center. The suite – to be unveiled in October - will have 88 new racks available immediately, with more promised for 2015. The timing of the launch coincides with the former IT company’s 21st birthday.

The Shoreditch Suite is designed to Tier III standards and ‘concurrently maintainable’, meaning that each critical part of the system is duplicated so maintenance can be carried out without downtime.

The project will see the data center operator quadruple its power capacity over the next four years. It has to, said MD Roger Keenan, because of the accelerating acceptance of the cloud computing model by businesses. “It has resulted in a huge increase in demand for network capacity. Our background in data comms and computing and central London location means we are ideally placed to deliver,” said Keenan.

City Lifeline has previously warned that power issues and skills shortages could limit the growth of the cloud computing and date center industries in the UK.

With the complexity of IT skills increasing, City LifeLine MD Roger Keenan said the government and skills training bodies are focusing on the wrong areas.

This, Keenan said, is creating massive skills shortages and holding back the industry.

According to figures quoted by City Lifeline, 146,200 job vacancies (22 %) were unfilled last year because of inadequate skills.