Northampton's financial services companies to be empowered by [...]

📅 October 6, 2010 - London, August 2010 Latest reports from the MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) suggest that The Bank of England ought to be putting more cash into the economy to facilitate the recovery rather than just simply lowering interest rates. In light of this, the pressure is on for companies in the banking and financial sector to cut costs in the running of their businesses. Northampton is one example of a financial services hub that has been described as "short changed" in the distribution of funding to local councils. Andrew Gilbert of Midlands based hosted IT solutions company, Node4 (node4.co.uk), plans to address this challenge by helping to build the nation's IT economy to make the county's businesses in both the public and private sector grow by making the most out of their IT investments. Following the recent success of three state-of-the-art data centres in Derby and Wakefield, Node4 has announced the opening of a new data centre Northampton during the early part of 2011. This is set to boost employment in the area and place Northampton on the map as a hub for innovation in IT. Northampton was selected as the best location for the fourth data centre owing to its transport links connecting London and the North and logistically being located directly in the heart of the UK.
With the economy set to remain unpredictable until Chancellor Osborne announces the Public Spending Review in October, the trend for companies outsourcing their data in an attempt to cut costs looks set to prosper. Node4's Managing Director Andrew Gilbert comments, "The new centre is designed to meet the needs of SME's who are trying to keep to strict budgets for managing and implementing IT. The data centre will be around twice the size of our Wakefield site at approximately 41,000 sq ft making it our biggest facility to date with an impressive planned capacity of 720 racks. The Northampton data centre will increase the company footprint further south and will be especially valuable to SME's in the region who often want to "touch and feel" the experience and who are keen to come and view the physical facility which will be housing their most valuable asset; their data. The Northampton site will boast high specifications by combining the latest in power, fire control, security, cooling and humidification technologies."
Gilbert adds, "We have already established ourselves as a quality data centre provider with two locations and we want to continue to build on this reputation by increasing our capacity and geographic reach with the opening of a new facility in Northampton. As with our other data centres, it will carry a high specification but at sensible prices meaning that any organisation wanting colocation or managed hosting services can benefit from a quality facility without having to break the budget."