brightsolid is an established Scottish data centre operator that specialises in private cloud provision and application hosting. It also offers colocation and connectivity from its two Scotland based data centres. Both brightsolid data centres are certified to ISO 27001 for data security, ISO 22301 for Business Continuity and ISO 14001 for Environmental Management and are both linked to London via an ultra-low latency 100GB fibre line.
Services offered by brightsolid are based on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) and all environments are flexible and fully configurable by the client. Managed Services, for example, can be composed of any combination of services and delivered on customer hardware or brightsolid supplied equipment.
brightsolid private clouds can be delivered over dedicated or virtual hardware, with hybrid clouds available for companies that need high levels of security for some, but not all aspects of their business. brightsolid also offers a remote hands service and has round the clock technical support.
brightsolid currently serves the Scottish, English and international business market but has a clear ambition to be the provider of choice for Scotlands thriving oil and gas industry. To this end it is investigating microwave-based connectivity between its Aberdeen data centre and the rigs in the North Sea which could help to overcome the challenges posed by physical subsea infrastructure.
Location
brightsolid is headquartered in Dundee, Scotland with further offices in partner data centres in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and London. It also has IT space in partner data centres in Manchester and Glasgow. It has two carrier neutral data centres in Aberdeen and Dundee, both of which are 100% owned by brightsolid and funded by parent group DC Thompson.
The heart of brightsolids operations is in the Dundee data centre located in Dundee Technology Park. It was built in partnership with IBM in two phases in 2006 and 2010 and offers 24/7 CCTV, manned security and two-step access control. Redundancy is N+1 throughout and rack power density averages 2.5kW, with up to 5kW available.
Security at the Dundee facility is high it is compliant up to official sensitive level for government data (Government Impact Level 4) and offers PCI DSS compliance too. It has a total capacity of 200 racks across two completely independent data halls and both halls are connected to brightsolids own nationwide fibre optic network.
The brand new Aberdeen data centre was built by data centre design and build firm Keysource. It offers 400 racks with a 25kW power capacity each and an additional suite with 200 seats for project work and recovery.
Aberdeen is fully Azure enabled and offers the first Scotland-based Microsoft Cloud OS partnership. Whilst it was built to serve all kinds of businesses and provide extra capacity for the almost full Dundee centre, it is strategically located in Scotlands oil and gas heartland and provides extensive connectivity to both offshore facilities and other global energy hubs.
For clients who require extra levels of security, Aberdeen can also accommodate dedicated environments that are PCI and IL4 compliant.
Energy
brightsolid claims that its new Aberdeen data centre is 80% more efficient than the average UK data centre. It was designed with energy efficiency as one of the key considerations and showcases designer Keysources ecofris chilled water cooling solution. It has a PUE of 1.25 and benefits from a cool climate that rarely reverts back to mechanical cooling.
Funding/business model
brightsolid Online Technology Limited is a privately held subsidiary of DC Thompson, one of Scotlands leading media companies. It was formed in 1995 as Scotland online and was split into two separate companies in 2008 one to focus on data centres, the other to focus on the growing genealogy group which would become Find My Past.
Customers and partners
brightsolid boasts a star studded Scottish client list, with some major England-based institutions and the odd international firm in the mix. It supports Standard Life, Scottish Widows, Clyde Blowers, NHS Scotland, University of St Andrews, Nationwide Building Society and Fife Council. It also hosts Aberdeen International Airport and Royal Bank of Scotland.
brightsolid was also recently added to the Scottish governments hosting services framework and has a large number of customers in Aberdeens oil and gas sector.
A bright company with excellent credentials
brightsolid is a vibrant, energetic and growing company with a clear vision for the future. It offers such an attractive level of services that it appeals to most of Scotlands own home grown blue chips and public sector organisations, as well as clients from elsewhere in the UK and beyond.
brightsolid is predominantly aimed at the larger end of the business scale, not least because it insists on a minimum contract term for colocation of 3 years. It offers mission critical, well-connected IT infrastructure services to a market that is currently underserved in Scotland. However, smaller businesses with modest requirements and the need for more flexible data centre services will find that brightsolids services are over engineered for their needs.