- Case Study
- Daisy Group Data Centre
Daisy Group Data Centre
Case StudyAbout
Daisy Group is one of the largest independent providers of unified communications and technology services to the UK’s business community. The Group offering spans business connectivity, communications including voice and mobile, as well as IT infrastructure. Daisy serves more than 65,000 customers and works with more than 2,000 partners and resellers to deliver communications to private and public sector organisations.
The Brief
Daisy’s original Manchester data centre was built in the late 1990s with most of the critical infrastructure reaching its technical end of life. The facility is housed within an ideal secure location within a decommissioned bank vault in the centre of Manchester.
As the business continues to rapidly grow, with several key acquisitions over recent years, a number of strategic drivers had been explored to develop a new facility.
The brief for a new data centre design contained 3 key challenges:
• Replacing the ageing infrastructure to meet current industry standards of design and efficiency.
• Limiting the capital outlay to meet business objectives.
• Maintaining uptime of the data centre without impacting the service and operation to its customers.
The Solution
Stage 1 UPS replacement
Stage 2 Electrical infrastructure
Stage 3 DCIM / BMS installation
The overall data centre project has resulted in numerous benefits to Daisy and its customer base. The data centre operation was mature, having been in place since the late 1990s. Through the work Sudlows has undertaken for Daisy the data centre critical infrastructure is now significantly upgraded.
Daisy benefits from an experienced and mature data centre operation underpinned with a new future proofed electrical infrastructure.
The success of the infrastructure works lead the client to investigate improved monitoring and management systems to improve the operation and get the most out of the infrastructure investment.
Most recently, Sudlows completed the final stage of the project, to install a new intelligent DCIM / BMS system which has provided Daisy with the following benefits:
• Improved operational management of the cooling infrastructure.
• Easy to understand visual display of all data centre critical infrastructure for the data centre operators and also for customers during site tours and visits.
• Improved monitoring of all critical infrastructure.
• Improved strategic reporting.
Along with the obvious operational benefits, the DCIM / BMS installation has added to the overall customer experience and improved sales process. It allows Daisy to demonstrate to their customers that its critical IT systems are housed within a resilient, redundant, well maintained and operated data centre, which underlines confidence in Daisy’s operational provision.
The Conclusion
Every critical stage of this data centre project had to be completed to a high standard. The staged delivery had to be phased in carefully and in a dynamic working environment with any integration challenges being promptly resolved before the final stage of commissioning.
This was extremely important to the client as all the works were being completed whilst maintaining a live data centre operation.
The success on this project was not just down to the management of risk during the key installation stages but also due in part to the technical collaboration between the Daisy and Sudlows teams to deliver this outstanding data centre facility.
Testimonial
“ We chose Sudlows as they came up with an innovative and cost effective plan which meant that the critical electrical infrastructure and UPS could be replaced in a modular staged plan.
This met the business objectives and increased the resilience and efficiency of the infrastructure without downtime to the data centre operation.
“The key aspect in choosing Sudlows was the confidence we gained in their team who came up with the design and migration plans which would not require any downtime whilst limiting the risk to the operation. The staged approach also helped in selling the subsequent phases back into the business due to the success of stage one.”
-Chris Smith, Head of Data Centres, Daisy Group
Location
Manchester
Value
£400,000
Sector
Technology
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