Pulsant is a well-regarded UK based provider of colocation, cloud and managed services, which include hosting, networks and applications, from its network of UK owned and non-UK leased data centre spaces.
Pulsant offers its services on a pay-as-you use basis and has recently expanded to offer consultancy and professional services through its acquisition of Spinnaker IT consultancy. This latest acquisition will enable Pulsant to help its own clients migrate to the cloud, hybridise their IT and develop the best-fit package of services.
Pulsants services are flexible and individually configured to suit each of its clients. It can cater for every type of business, from small start-up with modest needs right up to financial institutions and public sector bodies with major compliance, power and capacity requirements. Some of the UK data centres are on the government G-Cloud 6 Framework, are certified to PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) and comply with government security classifications.
Cloud services are offered on three levels enterprise, private and government (G-Cloud 6), with additional services available on top including back-up and disaster recovery. Cloud can also be offered as part of a hybrid solution alongside colocation services, so it meets the needs of businesses that for various reasons cannot put everything in the cloud.
Location
Pulsant owns ten fully redundant data centres in the UK, and leases space in a further six data centres across the globe. Three of those are in the US and there is one each in the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Germany. All of Pulsants UK data centres are ISO27001, ISO14001 and CSA Star certified, with CSA representing an additional level of compliance over and above ISO27001 for information security and trust, particularly in the cloud.
Pulsants carrier neutral data centres are spread throughout the UK. It has two in Edinburgh, two in Maidenhead, three in Reading and one in both London and Milton Keynes. The Reading Cadogan House data centre also serves as company headquarters.
All of the UK data centres are connected by Pulsants own dark fibre network, with connectivity options ranging from 1MB up to 100GB. Pulsants international data centre spaces are reached via third party dark fibre connections and data centres are served by up to 30 network providers including Hibernia, AT&T and BT.
Energy
Pulsant is an active Member of the Green Grid and won the Green IT award 2013 for its energy saving initiatives. All of its data centres are powered 100% by energy from sustainable sources, and all are equipped with the latest energy efficient hardware.
Funding/business model
Pulsant Limited has grown rapidly in recent years through a series of acquisitions and organic investment. It has rebranded twice since its original incarnation as EdNet in 1995, and was acquired by Bridgepoint Development Capital in 2010. Under the ownership of BDC Pulsant acquired Blue Square Data, DediPower and Scolocate and invested millions in data centre upgrades, expansions and refurbishment programmes. It also moved from being a predominantly Scottish company to a UK-wide company and moved base to Reading, although Pulsant (Scotland) Ltd oversees the Scottish operations and retains an office in Edinburgh.
In 2014, Pulsant was refinanced when ownership passed from BDC to private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners. Oakhill is a major investment player in the global data centre market and will enable Pulsant to consolidate its position as a mid-market IT provider by financing further strategic acquisitions.
Since the transfer to Oakhill, Pulsant has invested in an £18 million data centre upgrade and acquired IT consultancy Spinnaker Red in September 2015. Forecast revenues for 2015 are £45 million.
Customers and partners
Pulsant delivers its services to over 3000 SMEs, large businesses, charities and public sector organisations in the UK and beyond. It also boasts one of the most prestigious clients in the UK, the Royal Family, and holds the Royal Warrant for hosted IT and data centre services. It additionally serves the UK government via the Digital Marketplace as is on the Scottish governments Hosting Services Framework.
Vendor certifications and partnerships include VMWare Partner, Cisco Partner, Redhat Advanced Business Partner, HP Cloud Agile Partner and Microsoft Gold partner.
A company that is going places
Pulsant is a well-trusted, serious colocation and cloud services provider. It supports some of the most well-known UK organisations and consistently invests in the latest technologies, companies and facilities in order to deliver a premium service.
Pulsant has ambitious growth plans and serious financial backing. For companies and organisations seeking a solid, reliable and technologically advanced IT services provider, there is little need to look further than Pulsant.