Pulsant Edinburgh SC-1 South Gyle

Colo-X analysis

Pulsant acquired the former Scolocate data centre from Royal Bank of Scotland in December 2012. Having opened at the height of the “dot-com” boom, Scolocate was highly successful in attracting multiple-carrier points of presence and today the facility easily remains Scotland’s leading network ecosystem, with PeeringDB including over 30 “peers” and Pulsant listing 20 on-site carriers. The data centre has expanded across several phases since opening, the most recent of which opened in Q4 2015 a 300 rack, 1MW expansion taking total site capacity to nearly 1000 cabinets and 3.4MW. Standard rack power is either 16 or 32Amps.

Pulsant Edinburgh SC-1 South Gyle is one of three Pulsant owned data centres serving the Edinburgh and Scottish market and the operator is the clear local market leader as a result. This site now forms one of a string of 12 data centres across the country that Pulsant operate, from Edinburgh down to Croydon, as Pulsant seek to reposition themselves as one of the UK’s “edge” operators.

Pulsant Edinburgh SC-1 South Gyle facility description

Spread across three buildings on the South Gyle business park, the first phase 7000 sq ft opened in February 2000. Since then the data centre has expanded across numerous phases, the most recent of which opened in Q4 2015 and the site now offers some 36,000 sq ft of net technical capacity or 4MW of customer power over nearly 1000 cabinets. The most recent phase 7 added nearly 300 racks and 1MW of customer power.

IL2, IL3, ISO27001, PCI DSS accreditation’s make the site suitable for public sector customers and the site is part of the G-Cloud and Scottish Government frameworks.

South Gyle is located about 4 miles to the west of Edinburgh city centre or 2.5 miles east of Edinburgh’s international airport and just inside the A720, Edinburgh Bypass Road adjoining the start of the M8 motorway.  The business park is the home to large offices for Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Bank or other public sector bodies such as NHS Scotland.

Pulsant’s Edinburgh Medway data centre (former Onyx) is located half a mile to the south of South Gyle on the Sighthill Industrial Estate and the smaller Pulsant Newbridge (formerly Lumision) site is 5 miles to the west.

Colo-X published a commentary on the Pulsant Scolocate deal in 2012 which can be found via this link.

Pulsant now operate 12 data centres across the UK, ranging in size from 200kW to nearly 4MW and providing some 20MW of capacity in total. The company is now making much of their focus on “edge” colocation.

Technical stats