Redcentric London

Colo-X analysis

This long established data centre, once known as City Lifeline was acquired by Redcentric in January 2016. The site has historically been something of a telecommunications hub. It began operations in the late ’90s, acting initially as a DR site for the London Metal Exchange (LME), who pulled many carriers into the building. On the back of this connectivity, CityLifeline excelled as the new home for many old-style voice switches at the height of the telecommunications boom, as well as bespoke office/data floor solutions.

Since acquiring the site Redcentric have shifted the focus towards its location on the edge of London’s Shoreditch, with a tilt towards the faster growing AI and start-up culture of the area, taking advantage of the 22 onsite carriers.

Power densities will be light in the older areas of the building, but the more recently opened Shoreditch Suite on the uppermost fifth floor offers more contemporary densities.  Part-rack solutions available.

Redcentric London facility description

CityLifeline (CL) began in the mid ’90s as a burgeoning disaster recovery facility for financial institutions based in the City. This was crucial for their transformation into a colocation operator, however, as these early clients brought their network providers in with them. This has meant that CL has always offered an impressive carrier list, especially for a site of this size. During the dotcom boom, CL attracted ready interest from both network operators and voice carriers trying to rapidly find homes to house their equipment.

As a result of its age, power per cabinet is quite limited, at around 10Amps per cabinet as standard. However, this is compensated for by the completely flexible nature of their solution, impressive carrier list, lack of cross-connect fees, and convenient location approximately half a mile from Liverpool Street Station.

There are some 80 clients on site today, ranging from a single cabinet up to 1,800 sq feet in size.  The building underwent a power upgrade in 2014 with a new 2MVA substation delivered, tripling capacity from the existing (and well-used) 1MVA historic supply.

Redcentric

Redcentric plc is a mid-market publicly listed IT managed services provider, with a market valuation of just over £200m and turnover expected to be close to £160m per year.  The company was formed in 2013 by the reverse takeover of Harrogate based InTechnology by Redstone. In June 2022 Redcentric’s data centre capability was significantly enhanced by the two acquisitions of Sungard Availability Services and much smaller 4D Data Centres, adding five sites and some 17MW of new capacity.

The Redcentric UK data centre estate now offers 8 facilities, 7 of which are in London and the south east and only one, Elland, in the north.  Total capacity is around 20MW, with an additional 3MW from a lease in the Digital Realty Woking data centre.  The company’s former Harrogate data centre was closed in January 2024.

Technical stats