Aberdeen City Council is the latest customer to agree a deal with brightsolid as the Scottish cloud computing and data centre specialist seeks to make the Granite City a digital technology centre of excellence.
The council has awarded the Dundee firm a three-year contract, worth £1million annually, to manage its data services.
It sees brightsolid, which opened a £5million data centre in Aberdeen in October, provide a managed data centre service using a private storage “cloud”.
Key digital information is held securely in the firm’s high-tech facilities, while there is also a disaster recovery plan in place to make doubly sure the data is safe.
Brightsolid chief executive Richard Higgs said: “Aberdeen City Council has a very exciting vision that includes working collaboratively with other local councils, truly engaging with the community and providing high quality provision of connectivity for everyone.
“We’re delighted to provide the technology and personal service that will help the … council team to meet these critical objectives.
“When we made the decision to open a facility in Aberdeen our intention was to help the city become a centre of technological excellence and winning this business shows it’s truly something we can do.”
Brightsolid, which is part of publishing group DC Thomson, has migrated the council’s entire information technology estate to its private cloud in just six weeks.
The council said the firm was chosen for its ability to provide flexible data centre services at a competitive price, as well as its position as the only Scotland-based company that could deliver what was required.
Council finance, policy and resources convenor Willie Young added: “Aberdeen City Council has been impressed with the quality, flexibility and personalisation of service during transition to the new arrangements in extremely tight timescales, with minimum interruption to normal service.
“We have found a partner with whom we can innovatively work as we digitally transform our council services, while also reducing our operational costs.”
Last month, brightsolid said its new data centre in Aberdeen – on the premises of the Press and Journal on Lang Stracht – had won contracts worth more than £1million in its first three months of operation.