Verne London, Farringdon (formerly Volta)

Colo-X analysis

Volta was acquired by the UK listed infrastructure fund Digital 9 in April 2022 and is now known as Verne London, becoming operationally combined with two other Digital 9 data centre assets in Iceland (40MW) and Finland (8MW).  Late in 2023 the board of Digital 9 agreed to wind the company and return cash to shareholders. In March 2024 Verne Global was sold to French private investment house Ardian who intend to grow the primarily nordic based data centre company four-fold.

As of early 2023 Verne London were finally fitting out the balance of this 6MW site, completing the remaining space on the first and second floors to provide 2.1MW to a single client, an “established financial services customer”.

The Great Sutton Street location offers superb convenience to locally based businesses, either in London’s West End, the City or nearby Shoreditch.  Carrier choice is also strong given the site’s long history as a data centre, with over 40 networks listed on PeeringDB.

Cabinet space, offering 4kW per rack as standard can still be found, alongside some quarter and half racks through value-added resellers, but pricing, along with the rest of the data centre market has definitely moved higher in H2 2022 reflecting both rising occupancy and underlying power costs.

Verne Global’s London facility description

Volta Great Sutton Street has been in operation as a data centre since Reuters began operations here in 1990, primarily to service the needs of the financial services industry in the City. When Reuters sold their network business Radianz to BT, the facility passed over to BT Radianz who left the site in June 2012. Volta was specifically formed to acquire the site and develop what was in effect a brand new data centre that opened in the summer of 2013.

As part of the refurbishment of the building, Volta secured a new 10MW power feed, delivered at 33kV as opposed to the more usual 11kV. As a result, Volta is connected to two independent main grid connections, the City Road and St John’s Wood substations, giving the site a very high degree of resilience. The two 33kV transformers housed in the basement are solely for Volta’s own use.

The full fit out of the remaining capacity is underway as of early 2023 and when completed Verne London will offer 6MW across 1600 cabinet rack spaces over four floors.

Digital 9 and sale to Ardian in March 2024

Volta was acquired by Digital 9 Infrastructure plc (DGI9) for £45m in April 2022 and became  known as Verne London.

DGI9 is a FTSE250 listed specialist investment trust, focussing on investing in “sustainable” digital infrastructure.  Since their IPO on the London market in March 2021 the company has raised £905m and made 8 investments, including four data centres and also sub-sea network operator Aqua Comms and Arqiva, who own and operate numerous terrestrial TV and broadcasting sites in the UK.

The first and largest data centre acquired by DGI9 in September 2021 is the Verne Global site in Iceland, which operates 40MW of existing capacity and rapidly growing to 94MW, as interest in the location’s ultra-low power costs and sustainability grows.  Verne Global Finland, acquired in April 2022 is a 7.4MW site with 23MW potential.

The fourth data centre asset DGI9 acquired was the freehold of SeaEdgeUK1 in Newcastle, an 11MW site that houses the sub-sea landing station of AquaComm’s north sea cable systems and NO-UK, connecting the UK with Norway.  SeaEdgeUK1 is leased to Stellium Data Centres under a 25 year term who operate the site.

In late 2023, after a year of poor performance, the board of DGI9 decided to wind the investment trust up and return cash to shareholders who had seen the value of their investment decline substantially. The sale of Verne Global was announced in November 2023 for GBP£456m and finally closed in March of 2024 after a delay caused by regulatory approvals.

City of London Data Centre Options

Verne London is one of handful of data centre options located in and around the City, London’s historic financial centre and one of the newest of this small sub-group of London data centres.

The Colo-X data centre data base lists 9 data centres in and around the City, offering around 30,000 sq m of capacity or nearly 30MW. Many of these sites are quite old, having being originally opened in the dot-com boom of the late 90’s, but most are still in use and kept up to date, to varying degrees, by the current owners. Two of the oldest are the former Level3 data centre on Goswell Road and Redcentric’s CityLifeline. Colo-X was putting client’s into CityLifeline in 1999!

The largest and most important site in the City is the former Interxion campus on the old Truman Brewery site on Hanbury Street/Brick Lane and now part of Digital Realty. This campus comprises of 3 seperate data centres located quite close to each other and considered one site, offering around 10,000 sq m/100,000 sq ft in total, or 14MW from LON1 (the original and largest building), LON2 and the newest, LON3 which opened in 2019. The Hanbury Street campus is a reasonably well recognised ecosystem site, with a LINX node (around 60 ports in use out of 1300 in total in the London region) and also a strong financial community. As a result Digital (DRT) price this site quite high on a cost per kW basis, reflecting high occupancy and as such potential users need to be sure they are genuine ecosystem participants to justify the premium pricing (that is, running lots of cross-connects to other parties), as with all ecosystem sites.

A better value way to participate in the Hanbury Street ecosystem is to consider the nearby DRT Olivers Yard data centre, located about 1km to the west and on the City Road, just north of Finsbury Square. DRT acquired this site in 2016; it was originally opened by Globix in 2001 and then acquired by Telecity. Costs here are siginificantly lower than the nearby Hanbury Street campus yet users can still run cross-connects into LON1, 2 and 3. Colo-X can source 1/4, 1/2 and full racks here and has put a number of clients in wanting the comfort of dealing with one of the largest data centre operators and convenient access to the City and Shoreditch.

Redcentric’s Shoreditch data centre, formerly CityLifeline is also quite close to Oliver’s Yard. A small site overall of 2000 sq m or 2MW, it offers a decent carrier list due to its longevity as a data centre (PeeringDB lists nearly 40 networks) and Redcentric have proven to be quite flexible in adapting to customer needs here, for example with power density per rack, which helps align costs to customer’s actual needs. Again, part rack options are available.

Iomart’s London data centre on Epworth Street is situatied between Oliver’s Yard and Redcentric’s site. Quite a small site at around 2000 sq m and Iomart seem more focussed on colocation as part of a wider solution than colocation alone.

To complete this mini-review of City based data centres we have the former Level3 Goswell Road data centre, closer to Angel/Islington to the north of the City which is now part of COLT. Quite a decent size site with about 6MW available. Racks and even part-racks are available here via Colo-X partners.

Technical stats