SunGard Availability Services has announced plans to invest £15 million in upgrading its London Technology Centre (LTC) in Hounslow, to create the largest data centre exclusively used for business continuity in Europe.
Work has already begun on the full fit-out and commissioning of the 130,000 square foot 'MegaCentre', which will serve the major fixed IT recovery needs of UK customers.
SunGard says the new facility will increase its current UK data centre capacity by over 30% and provide traditional 'hotsite' recovery as well as 24/7 high availability and production hosting services.
The centre will connect to the existing SunGard ATM national network, which link's the vendor's regional sites, as well as to 'ScaleNet' - the high bandwidth metropolitan area network (MAN) for the London-region which SunGard acquired as part of Guardian iT. Both ScaleNet and ATM networks will connect to the pan-Atlantic SunGard Global Network.
Keith Tilley, managing director, SunGard Availability Services UK, says the company aims to increase the number of customer facing staff both in account management and service delivery.
"This concentration of platform diversity and technical knowledge under one roof within a 'MegaCentre' will, in the future, allow our customers to adapt their business continuity plans with confidence," adds Tilley.
The build-out and migration of the data centres will be controlled by Neil Dwyer, project office manager, who will head up the project team responsible for the development of the facility. Robin Rumbles, managing consultant, will be responsible for the workplace migration associated with the project.
The project has a completion schedule of Q3, 2003.
SunGard says the investment programme is being carried out across the rest of its UK data and recovery centres to ensure a strategic geographic reach and increase the total number of workplace recovery positions in the UK by over 500.