Infinity SDC is opening the third data center in its six-facility strategy in Slough, UK,  today.

It is a build that marks a new route to market for the company which said it will offer more flexible contracts in terms of size, power and terms of contract to the market.

Infinity is expanding on its move into the retail colo space, which took place 18 months ago, providing a full service offering for retail colo from installation to telco solutions and services around the cloud platform that will be well suited to service provider clientele.

New levels of scalability offered will be reflected in the construction of the site itself, which will come online in phases, the first offering 2MW of IT load in about 10,000 sq ft of technical space.

Infinity has secured 15MW for the large build – which today is a shell filled with the one data hall – but has adopted energy saving technologies to help it meet new power usage effectiveness (PUE) capping requirements down to 25%.

From chilled water to PUE
Infinity SDC commercial director Andrew Roughan said a new chilled water product allows the facility to achieve a PUE of 1.17 at 100% load – a figure that has already been tested before launch with independent supplier certification.

“When it comes to PUE capping, most data center operators in the market would only consider 50%,” Roughan said.

“What most providers have historically said is if the customer plays its role and utilizes space heavily, they will play theirs and guarantee an outcome on PUE of around 50%.

“When we designed our chilled water capacity, using a modular cooling solution, we took into account that some people may want to use IT at a lower level – and in this case the system can shut down accordingly to become more efficient.”

Infinity designed its chilled water system with AEUK – the main contractor for the facility.

“It is market leading at the moment, and we think others will replicate what we have delivered. It allows us to benefit from the external atmosphere, using the outdoor temperature for more than 95% of the year,” Roughan said.

Power to sell
Infinity said it will be offering pre-built halls of up to 180 racks, suites of 60 racks and rack level colocation with 1.8K per sq m density.

Two clients have already been let into the facility, both service providers, making up 250kW of pre let capacity.

Power is drawn from UK utility SSE Power and a heat power site at Slough about 300m from the data center. Infinity has also built a site-specific substation on site with dual 40MVA transformers.

“We are provisioning 34MVA power to the site but have 6MVA worth of growth for the future,” Roughan said.

Nine carriers already connect to the facility, and Infinity is partnering with EU networks to deliver a metro fiber ring connecting its other sites around London and key locations where shared assets may choose to cross connect, such as Equinix LD4.

Expansion plans
Infinty has a three to five-year plan to add three more facilities to its existing portfolio, which includes data centers in Stockley Park and Romford and the soon-to-be-built iCity at Stratford which will come online late 2015.

It also plans to expand on its Romford site creating a data center campus.

The blueprint for Infinity Slough could be used for this site, according to Roughan, but iCity will be a very different build – focussed heavily on London’s rising multimedia industry.

“The nature of iCity is very different to a purpose-built data center – it won’t be a conventional data center, it will be part of a digital media cluster,” Roughan said.

Roughan said he believes Infinity Slough will still make a mark, however, with a different offering for the London data center market.

“What we are trying to do is behave like a component in the IT solution, rather than a property where a solution resides,” Roughan said.

“We have a deep understanding of IT and how users are using it and an appreciation at this site that they are on a journey, and that we will need flexible options for the CIO to use a best in class facility but not commit to very long lumps of space and power like they used to do.”