5 December 2017, London UK: 4D Data Centres, the independently owned UK data centre operator and cloud provider, has just completed a £500k expansion of its Gatwick Data Centre in response to higher than expected demand from businesses across the South East.

Jack Bedell-Pearce, Managing Director at 4D Data Centres, said: "When we opened 4D Gatwick earlier this year, we wanted to replicate our reputation for being one of the best data centres in Surrey to the Sussex, Kent and South-East London area. Due to a hugely positive response from the local business community, we've been forced to bring forward our expansion plans for the site and invest £500,000 in building out additional rackspace to keep up with demand.

We're having a significant impact on boosting the digital economy of West Sussex by being able to provide faster internet connections and secure data centre space to growing businesses in Crawley, Croydon and Brighton in particular. Over the next year, we are planning to invest a further £1 million into infrastructure upgrades at the Gatwick site and continue to hire and train technical staff from the local area."

The expansion follows strong growth for 4D Data Centres, which has increased its workforce by 20 per cent in the last six months, employing new members of the team from the local area. Since opening in March 2017, the 4D Gatwick facility sold all of its 'Phase 1' rackspace capacity.

With current pipeline business looking strong, the 'Phase 2' expansion, which will see a third of the overall capacity being used, will take place within the next 12 months. Businesses of all sizes have trusted the site with their critical IT infrastructure, ranging from financial institutions through to logistics and service providers. The additional security a data centre provides over traditional in-house comms rooms is of particular interest to companies concerned over the introduction of GDPR (the European General Data Protection Regulation) that comes into force in 2018.

Sarah Loosemore, Operations Director at Interparcel, an online parcel delivery firm that delivers worldwide, said: "We are a .com business so if our website had issues it would greatly impact us, or, worst case scenario, if it went down, it would mean the business couldn't operate. We deliver parcels across the globe, so we must be responsive 24/7 - business continuity really is vital. We therefore need an IT partner and reliable, resilient data centre. 4D has been really flexible in terms of the way they have worked around us during the process of moving our IT operations over to the Gatwick site. We also chose them as they're five minutes down the road and if we ever need to go and sort a glitch out, we can gain entry securely, whenever we want, which we've found previous providers, especially the big ones, don't offer. It's good to know 4D are there to offer remote or onsite support whenever we need them to."

Key specifications of 4D Gatwick include:

• On-site security and technical engineers 24/7/365
• 3 megawatts of power capacity
• 10,000 square feet of technical space, up to 400 racks, able to draw 32Amps (as standard) of power each over A+B feeds
• Fully diverse fibre into the 4D Gatwick data centre
• Resilient IP transit delivered from 4D's core network at speeds up to 10 Gbps
• Dedicated cross-connects into the 4D Cloud platform as well as leading public cloud providers
• Fully resilient generators and UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) protection for backup power
• State of the art security, including biometrics and high-res CCTV

Jack added: "It's great to have had such a positive response from local businesses that are placing their trust in us. By expanding the site, we're able to meet their varying IT infrastructure, network and connectivity needs as they grow and evolve. Every business deserves to have access to high speed broadband and secure, reliable data centre services and delivering these services to the South-East region is our priority."

For more information about 4D Gatwick, and the services it can provide to your business, please visit: www.4d-dc.com/data-centre/gatwick