Latest News

Today Cogents Manchester fibre network has been delivered by UK Grid. This fibre network involves connecting Synergy House to Telecity Williams, Telecity Kilburn and IFL2. Paul Whitehead, the lead field engineer for Cogent reported "All the fibre is working 100% fine. I am very happy with the project and it is a refreshing change to have it all go very smoothly first time."

Cogent's presence in UK Grid's tier 2 facility on Manchester Science Park allows it's Synergy House customers to peer directly with a Global Tier 1 provider.

UK Grid today announces the completion of the ISO14001 giving UK Grid ISO14001 accreditation.

This certification complements UK Grid’s commitment to good environmental practice and highlights our commitment to the environmental impact born by data centres.

UK Grid has begun work to become ISO 14001 certified. ISO 14001 or an Environment Management System (EMS) is a tool for managing the impacts of an organisation's activities on the environment which UK Grid takes very seriously.

UK Grid already has measures in place to minimise the environmental impact of a data centre’s annual energy consumption, and the ISO 14001 will complement this further. UK Grid has recently announced its aim to become carbon neutral by off setting its carbon footprint, and by looking at alternative localised power generation such as CHP (Combined Heat and Power).

Patrick Doyle, UK Grid’s technical director said "No longer is it possible for data centre’s to continue consuming high electrical loads from the national grid. Energy prices, grid capacity and environmental impact all play a role in the finite longevity of conventional data centre infrastructure as we know it today. UK Grid has taken the decision to act sooner rather than later."

UK Grid has today become ISO9001:2000 certified. ISO 9000:2000 is the internationally recognised standard for an organisation's internal Quality Management.

Gaining ISO9001:2000 certification highlights UK Grid’s commitment to customer satisfaction and delivering quality services.

In an effort to deliver high quality services to its customers, UK Grid has started working towards ISO 9001:2000 certification.

This move signals UK Grid's commitment to its customer base with an improvement in working practices and the delivery of quality services.

No.1 Synergy House Data Centre will be the first Data Centre in Manchester to employ a cold air containment system in an effort to reduce it's carbon foot print.

Cold Aisle Containment makes sure that chilled air is delivered to the front of the racks by creating a cold aisle using curtain containment and a blanking plate system. The blanking plate system prevents warm air from re-circulating into the cold air which creates a negative effect.

This system has been tried and tested in a leading facility in London and results have shown a 75kw reduction in power usage in a similar sized facility to Synergy House.

UK Grid has already deployed an efficient UPS system with almost unity power conversion to help reduce power loss within the facility.

For further details on this new item please visit http://www.1synergy.net/environment.shtml

Today UK Grid has launched a new website dedicated to its new facility Synergy House. The website gives a detailed view of the infrastructure within the site, the services on offer and even a 3 dimensional virtual tour of the facility.

For futher details please visit http://1synergy.net

UK Grid today launched it's new unprotected Long Reach Ethernet service between London and Manchester. This new service provides a lower cost alternative to UK Grid's existing protected Long Reach Ethernet.

Patrick Doyle, UK Grid Technical director reported "This service is aimed at businesses in London looking for colocation outside of London due to lack of space and escalating pricing. Manchester is also proving itself as a popular site for redundancy outside of the capital."

For further information and pricing information please vist our LRE page at http://www.ukgrid.net/long_reach_ethernet.shtml

UK Grid today announced that a new partnership has been forged with Terremark inc.

Terremark Worldwide (NASDAQ:TMRK) is a leading global provider of IT infrastructure services delivered on the industry's most robust and advanced operations platform.

Leveraging purpose-built datacenters in the United States, Europe and Latin America and access to massive and diverse network connectivity from more than 160 global carriers, Terremark delivers government, enterprise and Web 2.0 customers a comprehensive suite of managed solutions including managed hosting, colocation, network and security services.

Bryan Crosswhite, Director of account management of the UK for Terremark said "Partnering up with a UK provider of network independent data centre’s such as UK Grid has enabled us to extend our reach into the UK."

UK Grid chose Chloride Power UPS systems not only because of their excellent track record and quality of design and build, but also because of their high efficiency and "green" status within their UPS portfolio.

Chloride are supplying all of UK Grid’s UPS systems for One Synergy House and future data centres currently being designed. This choice has been further backed up by Chloride winning the European UPS Company of the Year.

Andrew White from Chloride quoted: "Chloride Power Protection are clearly leading the way in delivering market leading critical power solutions while significantly and continually investing in higher efficiency and greener solutions. This has been highlighted by our recently awarded title of European UPS Company of the Year, while being the only critical power supply company to be associated with the EU Code of Conduct to Improve Energy Efficiency."

UK Grid is proud to announce that Cogent Communications are the first official customer of Synergy House Data Centre on Manchester Science Park.

"Cogent is pleased to provide the Manchester Science Park and surrounding area with access to the lowest priced, highest quality Internet service available in the industry", said Dave Schaeffer, CEO Cogent Communications. "Cogent's ability to offer pricing below the competition enables many businesses to build successful models that would normally not have a chance to succeed with pricing from other providers"

Cogent is a multinational Tier 1 Internet service provider and the second largest carrier of Internet traffic in the world with over 10 Petabytes per day crossing its network.

Patrick Doyle, Technical Director of UK Grid said, "This is great news for Synergy House and Manchester, bringing further Tier 1 Transit into the Internet arena and bolstering the offerings of our carrier-neutral facility."

UK Grid today has announced that the planned opening date of Synergy House Data Centre will be the end of March 2008.

Located on Manchester Science Park, Synergy House will have its own HV supply and sub station, and will be a full specification Tier II data centre.

Rob Garbutt, Managing Director of UK Grid today reported,

"Deals have been signed with equipment manufacturers Chloride and Airedale and work will commence shortly after Christmas. This is an exciting time for UK Grid, bringing 7000 sq ft of premium colocation space to Manchester Science Park."

For further information on Synergy House, please call our sales team on 0845 260 4743, or you can register your interest at http://www.ukgrid.net/contact.shtml

Over the last few months we have added quite a few Data Centre's to the UK Grid Network.

In Manchester the Data Centre's on our network include:

• Greenheys Data Centre
• IFL1
• IFL2
• TelecityRedbus Williams
• TelecityRedbus Kilburn

In London the Data Centre's on our network include:

• TelecityRedbus Harbour Exchange
• TelecityRedbus Sovereign House
• Telehouse North
• Telehouse East
• Telehouse Metro

We can provide a number of different services in each of these locations.

If your preferred Data Centre is not located above, please contact us to discuss your requirements as we are constantly expanding the UK Grid network.

We are pleased to offer the following deals on Colocation until December 31st 2007

Greenheys Data Centre - No setup fee on all new colocation deals and 2 Mbps of IP Transit included with 1/4 lockable and full cabinets.

IFL - 50% off setup fee and 2 Mbps of IP Transit included with 1/4 lockable and full cabinets.

Please contact us to discuss your requirements.

UK Grid’s latest addition to its 'carrier-neutral' data centre's brings 2 floors of premium data centre space with fully redundant power and cooling to Manchester Science Park.

Synergy House will be serviced by dual fully diverse dark fibre rings providing a high availability, fully secure facility that welcomes colocation customers from all sectors. The facility will be open for business in early 2008.

Please take a look here for further information and check back as more information will be added soon.

UK Grid now exchanges 28% of all IP traffic via Internet Exchange Points. This means that our customers benefit from low latency with much of the traffic to and from their web sites being sourced only 1 hop away. UK Grid peers at five different Internet Exchange Points including LINX, LoNAP, LIPEX, MCIX and MaNAP.

For a full description of peering at Internet Exchange points please take a look at our network page

Global Crossing has been chosen to bolster up our IP Transit delivery. This additional tier 1 provider means we now have a solid mix of transit providers including Tiscali, Level3, Cogent and now Global Crossing.

Global Crossing offer some of the best routes out to the US and Europe and is one of the largest global carrier one's in the world.

Today we have lit a new dedicated fibre between IFL and TelecityRedbus Williams House giving us up to 10 Gbps of un contended bandwidth between both sites. This also means that UK Grid can provide Metro Ethernet via Dark Fibre from Greenheys Data Centre into Williams House and across to IFL.

Today UK grid has connected up a third tier one transit path in it's London POP via Cogent.

"Cogent is a multinational Tier 1 Internet service provider ranked as the largest Ethernet Service Provider in the United States by Ovum-RHK and consistently ranked as one of the top five networks in the world. Their primary service offering consists of Internet access, data transport, colocation and managed modem services-all offered over an award-winning fiber optic, IP data-only network."

Patrick Doyle, UK Grid's Technical Director said, "This is all part of our continuing plan to be able to supply the best possible transit to our customers by using multiple tier one providers. It now means we can supply independent and redundant transit out of London and also further bolster our bandwidth delivery to our customers in Manchester."

LINX or the London Internet Exchange is one of the the largest internet exchange points in the world. The reputation of LINX is built on the standard of companies that use the exchange and also the quality of service they deliver.

Today UK Grid is pleased to launch LINX from Anywhere. LINX from anywhere means customers can use the UK Grid's infrastructure to connect directly into LINX and thus negate the need for expensive colocation and networking equipment. Once connected into LINX via our layer 2 connection or pseudo wire, customers have access to a huge list of potential peering partners and can literally save £100's per month in IP Transit costs and of course create a low latency network

For further information please click here

As part of our continued network expansion, we are pleased to be able to offer our IP transit network, London Metro, and p2p connections between London and Manchester, from Telehouse East in London's Docklands.

As part of our commitment to keep our customers informed of latest events within UK Grid we are pleased to have launched our May newsletter.

30th April, 2007 - UK Grid launches new 1/4 lockable colocation cabinet

UK Grid has today launched a new data cabinet specifically for colocation. The cabinet is sectioned off into 1/4 rack segments each 600mm x 1000 mm and 11U in height. Each section also has an individual lockable door meaning customers have greater security than with a shared cabinet.

The current pricing for these cabinets is as follows:

Individual Quarter Cabinet Pricing

2.5 Amps Included
1 Mbps Included
Setup £ 150.00
Monthly £ 250.00

For further information on UK Grid Colocation please click here

Continuing with its network expansion and resilience project, UK Grid brings online a second link between London and Manchester.

Patrick Doyle, the technical director of UK Grid says:

"This is phase I of a key project to increase the network resilience of UK Grid. The next phase will see a new network POP being brought online in Telehouse North which will provide a fully redundant and site independent network between London and Manchester. With the new London to Manchester link we can now provide direct connectivity between both cities allowing customers to colocate with UK Grid in both London and Manchester.

An example scenario would be a customer that colocates in London but would like redundancy for their solution in Manchester. UK Grid customers colocating in London can use London transit for Internet traffic, they can also have a separate connection to Manchester where their redundant equipment would be colocated. We can then also provide them Manchester transit for their Manchester colocation so there is no additional latency by pushing transit from one city to the other".

Today we have officially launched our new corporate website with some new product launches including London colocation, Dedicated Servers and Shared/Managed Firewall solutions.

The website contains our new corporate logo and colour schemes. We have also included a new service status page to give our customers up to the minute information on any current issues with our infrastructure.