Memset is a UK hosting company that offers green cloud and virtual hosting services to the government, the wider public sector and a range of recognisable UK business brands. Its business model is based on offering premium hosting services that come with flexibility, scalability and fair pricing, with the added layers of high security and reliability that government IT services naturally demand. Its data centres are certified to ISO 27001, it has IL2 accreditation and is an approved supplier to the governments G-Cloud store.
Its data centre offering covers two key markets the businesses that want low cost, energy efficient quality hosting, and the organisations that depend on security above all else. Each type of client is based at one of the two Memset data centres, one of which is operated via third party data centre developer Everest. Everest worked with Memset for a year to get their Reading Link33 data centre accredited to OFFICIAL status.
Memset began pursuing Public Services Network (PSN) compliance in 2012 for its own data centre in Surrey. PSN compliance allows companies like Memset to offer cloud services to the public sector over the governments highly secure, high speed network. The data centre is now connected to the Protected PSN and is IL4 capable, which means it is secure enough to transmit confidential government data, as opposed to the standard IL2 and even IL3 level for the vast majority of semi-confidential information. The Reading data centre facility is not connected to the PSN, and offers OFFICIAL over internet, a lower security level.
Location
Memset is registered at Surrey Research Park in Guildford, Surrey. It owns one UK data centre and has opened a datacentre within a datacentre in the Everest Link33 Reading facility. It also has space in other, unpublished locations. Memsets own bricks and mortar is the £1.8 million PSN Protected data centre in Dunsfold Park, Surrey. The two sites are linked via a 10GB network, over which Memset enables its own VPN to guarantee its 99.995% uptime.
Memsets fully redundant data centres offer biometric access control, constant CCTV monitoring with 90 day recording retention, perimeter controls and government-level security clearance for onsite staff. Its PSN data centre offers additional security measures, including two-factor biometric access control, staff with the highest level of security clearance and rooms and caging suited to the security levels. Power supplies are what you would expect from a data centre company that offers 99.995% uptime SLAs.
Energy
Memset was the first Carbon Neutral hosting company in the UK, as accredited by the CarbonNeutral Company. It achieved this by investing in energy efficient servers, encouraging existing suppliers such as Dell to improve the energy efficiency of their hardware and opting for greener suppliers where possible. The rest of the carbon footprint was reduced through offset projects.
Memset is certified to ISO 14001 for environmental management, complies with the EU Code of Conduct for data centres and adheres to its own strict energy efficiency policies. Amongst its own measures is the promotion of the use of Miniserver VM Cloud Servers, which can be scaled up or down on demand with corresponding energy use. Within the data centre itself, energy saving technologies such as the chilled water loop, adabiatic coolers, solar panels and climate monitoring, all help towards reducing energy consumption.
Environmental awards won by Memset include the Guildford Green award for commitment to sustainable business, PCPro’s environmental innovator award for ongoing commitment to environmental innovation, British Computer Society awards, in the BP Environmental category and the UK CEED Sustain IT Environmental Innovator award.
Funding/business model
Memset is a UK-registered private limited company. It is debt-free, turns a profit and is growing organically without the help of outside investment. 90% of Memsets shares are owned by the managing co-founders who happen to be siblings.
Memsets growth plan is to focus on partnership data centres that meet its strict specifications. It no longer wants to own data centres, or real estate, but instead want to focus on the service side and continue to serve the growing public sector appetite for IaaS.
Customers and partners
Memset customers include a range of government departments, including the Land Registry, HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions. It also counts a number of private businesses amongst its clients, such as SquirrelSave, Boots, Osprey, Lush and Private Eye.
A new breed of data centre with scope for growth
The Memset team have packaged everything a business, or government department, could want into one, compact service offering. It has a good range of customers under its belt and has spare capacity for many more. Getting clients signed up is the key to Memset being able to grow further and really branch out to offer its services on a wider scale.