Scotland-based data centre company acquires five new sites across the UK

A LANARKSHIRE data centre business has moved to acquire five sites across the UK amid a funding pledge from its Dutch owner.

Asanti Datacentres Limited has acquired the data centres from Daisy Group, described as one of the country’s largest IT services providers and communications firms.

It said that the move is a “landmark deal for the UK data centre market”.

It comes after Asanti was acquired recently by Invesis, a global investor and developer of infrastructure projects. Invesis said it has committed to providing additional funding “that will enable Asanti to secure further acquisitions and develop new-build data centres in the UK and Europe”.

Daisy Group’s data centre professionals have joined Asanti’s headquarters in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, as part of the acquisition.

As well as Daisy’s Hamilton site, Asanti acquired centres located in Birstall, Manchester, Reading and Farnborough.

Asanti said the Daisy data centres have a capacity of over 1,500 racks across the UK “providing clients with minimal data latency”.

It also said the data centres are paired, each offering a nearby location to house disaster recovery systems, offering business continuity to clients.

The data centres are connected to a single national mesh network with a connection speed of over 100GB per second.

Under the agreement Daisy will remain the service provider and will become a client of Asanti. Daisy’s customers will continue to be hosted in the data centres, and their services will remain unchanged.

Stewart Laing, Asanti chief executive, said: “Asanti is committed to offering the best service, innovation and environmental solutions available in the regional edge data centre industry today.”

Chris Williams, Invesis chief executive, said: “Data centre infrastructure is fundamentally important to many organisations and the Asanti team has a clear vision of its role in this market, both now and in the future.

“That’s why we’re backing them. We see this as an important step towards a major involvement for Invesis in this important area of infrastructure.”

Ivan Mckee , Scottish Enterprise Minister, said: “The Scottish Government is helping grow Scotland’s green data centre market sustainably, in partnership with public sector organisations like Host in Scotland and in line with goals in the national strategy for economic transformation.”

Mr Mckee said that “this is a clear signal to the market that we have businesses with the ambition and capability to develop the sector”.