Good to hear of the expansion plans from M247, or Icecolo as they like to be known.   This Manchester based colocation and hosting provider really surprised me when I visited them in 2010 with their dual use of both a free air/adiabatic cooling solution (which really gives credibility to their claimed PUE of 1.18) but which they also backed up with standard CRAC units whilst they explored the newer adiabatic solution.  I just wasn’t expecting to see so much innovative thinking in such a small site and it was a welcome surprise, indeed it was my first such viewing of a colo site using an adiabatic system (though I have of course seen many more since).  Suffice to say this exercise seems to have gone well for Icecolo!

The company have announced the freehold purchase of the building next door to their existing site where their 150 rack data centre is built out on the ground floor and staff located upstairs.  The new site will offer some 400 cabs (at 4kW on average) but scope for a couple of larger dedicated halls of 100 cabinets each also available. The first capacity on the site will be available early in the new year, though Icecolo do have some capacity remaining in their existing facility.

Given all the recent excitement on the Manchester data centre scene of late (ie Telecity’s acquisition of UKGrid) Icecolo definitely see themselves now as the main carrier neutral “alternative” to Telecity, though to strengthen this claim Icecolo will need to up their carrier count, with only BT, C+W and Virgin onsite at the moment.  But worth remembering they do directly connect into both Kilburn and Williams House (the longest established Manchester network nodes) and IFL2 (now I think known at Telecity 2) on their own fibre ring, so can easily offer connectivity to to any of these sites, as well as their own direct connection into Amsterdam, diverse of London, that they announced in July.  Perhaps we’ll see a greater tilt towards colo customers going forward than the current even balance of colo versus managed services customers as result.

Icecolo pricing, perhaps reflecting that low PUE, is competitive, even by local standards and is definitely towards the bottom end of the range of our “UK wide” pricing parameters (based on a price per kW per month basis, icnluding power usage) that we oft discuss and can be found on our presentations (see downloads).   To discuss pricing in detail or suitability of this site please call us, as ever.

The Colo-X overview of the Manchester colocation market can be found here.

Tim Anker, October 2011