Data center provider Infinity has won a five year contract with Janet (Joint Academic Network) the UK’s national research and education network.

The new facility will be the first shared data center for medical and academic research in the UK, with funding of £900,000 provided by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, HEFCE.

The new data center for JISC (the joint information systems committee) will house the IT from a consortium of six of the UK’s scientific and academic organizations.

The initial JISC partners are University College London (UCL), Kings College London, The Sanger Institute, The Francis Crick Institute, The London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

Infinity will operate the data center at its Slough facility in the UK.

The design combines a traditional three tier data center with a range of low to high power rack densities and an aggregated discount pricing structure across all organizations using the service.

The design is aimed to create an infrastructure that supports workload balancing and usage monitoring.

Infinity claims this high performance computer co-location environment with an average power density of 10kWs per rack.

JISC executive director and CEO of Janet Tim Marshall said The new JISC data center will grow to more than 800 racks’ capacity and allow the community to share large swathes of data.

“By having the shared data center users can access off-site data storage and services. This means users can consolidate their sensitive data in one safe environment and increase collaboration, whilst saving money on operational costs and duplication,” Marshall said.