Partner Article

Time capsule buried to mark milestone

AN AWARD-winning technology company has marked the start of a milestone project by burying a time capsule.

Aspire Technology Solutions decided last year that having its own purpose-built data centre would support its plans for rapid growth and provide its customers with the highest levels of resilience and security.

So working in partnership with Dixon Dawson Chartered Architects and Gateshead Borough Council, work has now started on a £1.2m 3,500 sq ft data facility next to Aspire’s iconic headquarters at Heworth Hall.

When complete, the data centre will create work for a further 15 Aspire employees, including engineers and sales people. The company currently employs 40 people.

To mark the start of construction, which should take 12 months, Aspire Managing Director Nigel Begg and Sales Director Michael Errington did the spade work to bury the time capsule.

Items buried included a ZX Spectrum computer, a laptop computer, an SAFC shirt and a NUFC shirt, a bottle of champagne, photos of Aspire HQ Heworth House past and present, and an Aspire uniform.

“This is a really big step forward for Aspire TS and the services we can offer our valued customers so we thought it was right to mark the occasion,” said Nigel.

“Who knows when these items will see the light of day again, but we hope whoever seems them next will get an understanding of the work we do and the values we have, particularly around customer service.

“The Data Centre will take us to the next level in terms of what we can offer our customers. It will be categorised as Tier 3, which is one of the most stringent data centre ratings offering the highest levels of resilience, security and 99.98% availability.

“We wanted the independence and flexibility that a data centre would give us and our customers. It will enable us to support the evolving needs of the marketplace and provide high availability solutions, virtualisation, consolidation, remote management and remote monitoring.

“And obviously having our own data centre means we don’t have to share capacity with other companies and organisations – like most other technology firms do,” added Nigel.

Chris Fraser, Technical Director of Aspire, added: “The data centre will be among the most energy efficient in Europe, using revolutionary evaporative cooling technologies rather than traditional refrigeration which results in greatly reduced electricity consumption for all IT equipment and servers. This in turn reduces operational costs which can then be passed on to our customers.”

“We already have presence in five data centres across the UK, all of which we will retain moving forward. It’s important to point out that the new facility is not about replacing existing space; it’s about further expanding our business and meeting demand.”

Funding for the data centre came from Aspire’s management and a Let’s Grow grant from the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) of £220,000.

“We’re really grateful for the RGF grant, it came as a huge boost to us and the grant application process was straightforward and painless,” said Nigel.

“We have spent a number of years planning and preparing for significant growth as a business and we are now realising those plans. We have won some significant business in recent months which proves we are heading in the right direction and our data centre will be the next piece of the jigsaw.”

Aspire is an award-winning managed services company specialising in hosted services, data centre solutions, communications and traditional IT outsourcing. Established in 2006, Aspire has increased its turnover by 195 per cent in the last three years to £3.8m, and is on track to achieve its target of turnover of £11m in the next two years.

Earlier this year, the company won the Small Business of the Year category in the North East Business Awards.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section