IBM is to open a new data centre at Greenock in Scotland aimed at small to mid-sized companies.

Offering facilities such as energy efficient cooling, 24 hour security, alarm monitoring, CCTV and resilient internet connections, the centre will allow smaller companies to consolidate their IT infrastructures in a single, secure location and reduce costs and staff management time.

In addition to IBM equipment, clients can move their existing back-office hardware to the facility and manage it themselves remotely or have IBM perform basic management and monitoring functions through a collocation arrangement.

Alex Reardon, director, General Business Sector, UK & Ireland for IBM, explains: “This new service aims to offer quick financial returns to a medium-sized business by removing the challenge of securing and maintaining their data centres, so potential savings can be ploughed back into their business.”

The new centre is being built to IBM's strategic "green" standard using best practice in cooling and power management where the technology has been designed to take advantage of the free cooling of local climatic conditions.

IBM has committed £540 million globally to deliver technologies that help clients dramatically increase the level of energy efficiency in their data centres and cut energy costs by as much as 40 per cent.

IBM has had a facility in this part of Scotland for 57 years. The new data centre complements the company’s existing Greenock site which is now a service-based facility with its highly skilled flexible workforce providing key support to IBM’s global growth.

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