SCC Fareham

Colo-X analysis

UK-based managed service provider SCC acquired the former SSE Fareham data centre in October 2014 after the electric utility provider decided to pull out of their nascent interest in the UK data centre industry. Under SCC the Fareham data centre will compliment SCC’s original Birmingham data centre. The facility overall is of high standard and can offer decent rack power densities, with occupancy underpinned by two large wholesale scale enterprise customers.

SCC Fareham facility description

SSE (Scottish and Southern Energy) acquired this facility from Cantono in May 2009. SSE are a large UK electricity company (FTSE100) operating three regional power networks and is the second largest generator in the country. They also have a telecoms arm which was known as Neos (now rebranded as SSE Telecoms) which is a national carrier. So while SSE Data Centres was quite a new name in the colocation market, their parent is a substantial company and the move into operating data centres was a very good fit with their existing skills set. However, despite these obvious synergies between the electric utility market and the data centre industry, SSE sold the facility to SCC in October 2015.

The gross floor space is 80,000 sq ft in a large warehouse building just off the M23 between Portsmouth and Southampton on the south coast. A mezzanine covering the ground-floor plate has been constructed.

The design philosophy behind the site was to build a pod system (originally created by IBM) with each pod being either 1000 or 3,000 sq ft. A 1,000 sq ft pod will house 40 cabinets on a hot/cold aisle basis. It’s a tidy design with all CRAC (air handling units) on the outside of the room giving a clean internal environment. With additional CRAC units, pods can handle up to 25kW per rack.

Technical stats