The youngest operation of Scottish publishing group DC Thomson is up and running alongside the oldest after cloud computing and communications specialist brightsolid opened a £5million data centre in Aberdeen yesterday.
Completed in just nine months, the high-tech new facility will house masses of computer generated information.
At full capacity, the 23,700sq ft centre will hold the equivalent of more than 100,000 MacBooks and have the ability to store the same amount of data that Facebook currently holds globally.
It is on the site of Aberdeen Journals – home to the 268-year-old Press and Journal, Scotland’s oldest daily newspaper, and the Evening Express – on the Lang Stracht.
The data centre has been designed to the highest technical specification and provides unrivalled digital infrastructure to firms in and around Europe’s energy capital and beyond.
It has “Tier III” status for its multiple security systems, meaning data is exceptionally well protected from natural hazards and human threats.
Power outages will not be a problem, thanks to impressive back-up arrangements which will keep the servers running permanently.
Richard Higgs, chief executive of Dundee-based DC Thomson subsidiary brightsolid, said: “We decided to build our next Tier III data centre in Aberdeen for a number of reasons.
“Our primary facility in Dundee was reaching capacity due to the positive market response to our clouds, and expansion was always in our business strategy.
“After a detailed review of the market we realised that Aberdeen had an absolute need for a world-class data centre and cloud partner that could help deliver on cost-saving efficiency objectives.”
Helping to deliver the project was data centre designer and builder Keystone, whose managing director, Mike West, said: “We are delighted to have been able to work with brightsolid on delivering this word-class facility in Aberdeen.”
Aberdeen Journals editor-in-chief Damian Bates said the new centre, which keeps data at optimum levels of temperature and humidity to ensure uninterrupted operation, was also an “exciting new chapter” in the newspapers’ history.