News: Data centre achieves PCI DSS compliance

IT infrastructure company, Onyx Group, has been certified as compliant to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) at its Yorkshire Data Centre in Rotherham.

Stockton-based Onyx opened its Yorkshire facility at Pioneer Close, Manvers in 2012 where it delivers Cloud hosting and backup, colocation, IT support and security. The £2m investment has been certified to v3.0 level 1, which means Onyx customers hosted systems can be involved in a variety of payment channels in the certain knowledge they are locating their hardware in a fully audited and certified facility.

PCI DSS was developed in 2004 by major credit card companies to encourage and enhance cardholder data security and facilitate the broad adoption of consistent measures globally. Today any company that stores, transmits or processes cardholder data must comply with the requirements.

2014 saw online retail sales break through the £100 billion barrier for the year for the first time in history. A growth of 14% on the previous year, the figure demonstrates the increasing need to protect critical cardholder information, reassuring both organisations and customers alike.

PCI DSS is no small undertaking and achieving it puts Onyx in a small number of companies that can help customers to more easily attain compliance for their end to end business systems. The site is also ISO27001 Information Security Management accredited and features other support their retail and e-commerce customers such as vulnerability assessments, Anti-Virus, Web-Filtering, Firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems.

Neil Stephenson, CEO of Onyx Group, said: "As a company we are committed to offering our clients and businesses throughout Yorkshire the very best in terms of cutting edge security and resilience. Achieving PCI DSS was the next step in our ongoing strategy to offer businesses superior I.T. services and is indicative of the continued investment that we are making to our infrastructure and the Yorkshire region.

"With our Yorkshire Data Centre passing the rigorous compliance assessment, we can now help to remove the burden associated with meeting such high standards, allowing our customers to focus on what is most important to them; their business."

Onyx Group website

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News: Onyx hosting Big Data event

IT infrastructure providers, Onyx Group, is hosting an event at its Rotherham data centre to show businesses how best to get the most out of data.

"Big Data: Intelligence and Infrastructure" is being organised by the Onyx Group, in partnership with Rotherham company Biz-ICT.

The aim of the free event on September 9 is to address the subject of Big Data and Business Intelligence, putting the power to exploit the vast amount of data that flows through a business back into the hands of the senior management team.

Neil Stephenson, chief executive of Onyx Group, said: "This event will provide South Yorkshire businesses with a unique opportunity to discuss the impact of "Big Data" and to view the modern infrastructure we have available at our site in Rotherham.

"Most organisations have many years of historical data that is both strategically and tactically valuable. The wider question is how to manage that Big Data for the long-term benefit of the business.

"We understand that many companies lack the internal capability to manage big data themselves, so this event will address the issues many businesses are concerned about. Our session in Rotherham will present the benefits of real-time business intelligence and explore the bigger picture around big data infrastructure, now and for the future.

"Delegates will hear and get practical advice with a modern approach to big data that illustrates how organisations can furnish themselves with the power to exploit the vast amounts of information that flows through their business, without the need for in-house business intelligence experts or expensive systems."

Stockton-based Onyx opened its Rotherham facility at Pioneer Close, Manvers in 2012 where it delivers Cloud hosting and backup, colocation, IT support and security.

Also based at Manvers, Biz-ICT is an accredited Microsoft SharePoint specialist, providing integrated collaboration and business process applications, such as human resources, training, health and safety and intranets.

Mark Walsh, managing director of Biz-ICT, said: "We are pleased to join forces with Onyx Group for this event. At Biz-ICT our senior management team has 25-years’ experience in designing, delivering and supporting software solutions for businesses.

"We are therefore well placed to showcase and demonstrate the benefits of SharePoint to businesses leaders from many sectors who don't need to be IT experts to understand its use. The software solution is ideally suited for infrastructure planning and creating the right platform for them to analyse the performance of their business easily and quickly."

Onyx Group website
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News: Onyx Group named official public sector cloud supplier

Data Centre and Cloud specialists, Onyx Group, is celebrating after being named as one of the official Cloud Computing suppliers to the Government. 

Following the launch of the Government's G-Cloud initiative, CloudStore, an online store where public sector organisations can go to buy pre-procured cloud services, Onyx Group has been listed as an official Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Specialist Cloud Services supplier to the UK public sector.

Onyx Group has ten sites throughout the UK including in Rotherham, which offers access to a 250-seat workplace recovery centre and a 320 rack state-of-the-art Data Centre. 

By bringing a broader range of suppliers to the public sector market, the UK Government is hoping to reduce public sector IT spending by £120m. It aims to encourage public sector bodies to purchase commodity, cloud based IT products through their CloudStore and believe the new framework will continue to provide a cost-effective, quicker and clearer way for government organisations to procure cloud services. 

Neil Stephenson, CEO of Onyx Group, is delighted that Onyx has been named as an official supplier and feels the G-Cloud framework is ideal for public sector bodies looking to enhance their IT performance.

He said: "Following a large-scale investment in our Cloud infrastructure, we were always confident that we would be able to meet the criteria required to be listed as an official supplier of Cloud services to the UK public sector. 

"With Public Sector bodies now having the option to purchase and use Cloud services as they need them, rather than being tied to expensive, long-term contracts, they can benefit from a more flexible and agile approach to IT that will allow them to adapt to their ever changing business needs with ease."

Since being named official suppliers to the G-Cloud network for the first time back in 2012, Onyx Group, celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, has continued to expand its public sector portfolio.

Stockton-based Onyx opened its Rotherham facility at Pioneer Close, Manvers in 2012.

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News: Onyx secures clients in Yorkshire

Stockton business IT provider, Onyx Group, continues to find success in Yorkshire with its state-of-the-art data centre in Manvers, Rotherham.

The company, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, has seen turnover approach £20m in 2013, an increase of 13 per cent on the previous year. However, it has recognised a need to still have a local presence in key regions across the country.

Onyx opened its Rotherham facility in 2012, offering businesses access to a 250-seat workplace recovery centre and a 320 rack state-of-the-art data centre. The firm employs more than 120 staff across the country from ten sites and offices.

By locating the facility in Yorkshire, Onyx Group has put its national expertise within reach of businesses looking to outsource its IT needs in the region. Since launching the new facility, Onyx has expanded the number of Yorkshire companies it is working with, including high profile businesses such as DFS.

A recent KPMG survey of UK businesses showed that 56 per cent cited the need to access skills as influential behind their decision to outsource and 45 per cent of businesses expect to increase IT outsourcing in 2014.

Neil Stephenson, CEO of Onyx, said: "Research shows that high up on the list of business worries is not having the technical knowhow to support the business IT requirements now and into the future.

"One of the key trends that address these challenges is that more businesses are looking to outsource all, or parts of their technology infrastructure to data centres and managed services businesses. A drive to access the best skills and the latest robust technology infrastructure is at the heart of this.

"This is why Onyx has opened its state of the art Yorkshire data centre to support increased demand from the businesses in the county and surrounding areas to outsource and colocate Data and IT systems somewhere close by.

"Local businesses are looking for all the usual benefits associated with outsourcing with the additional element of keeping data and IT systems local. One of the key benefits of outsourcing continues to be cost, however, other key factors include access to a broader range of often scarce skills.

"Skills at the forefront of technology expertise and in specialised areas are in short supply and the average business doesn't always require these skills on a full time basis, but can benefit from accessing them through an external partner."

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News: Parseq secures data centre contract

Rotherham-headquartered business process and technology specialist, Parseq, has secured a disaster recovery contract with banking sector software provider, Intelligent Environments.

Based at Hellaby, Parseq specialises in mobile and online banking software and technology-led outsourcing services. As well as processing over 75,000 items of correspondence a day, Parseq has a 12,000 sq ft data centre that opened in 2011.

Intelligent Environments is a provider of innovative mobile and online solutions for financial services organisations. Its software enables secure financial applications on mobiles, tablets and desktops for the likes of Lloyds Banking Group and Telefonica (O2).

Having signed a two-year IT disaster recovery and resilience deal for the management of its own data, Parseq will back up Intelligent Environments' server in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, with a direct point-to-point link to a server at its facilities in Rotherham.

In the event of the primary server crashing, Parseq's server will automatically take over using the most up to date information from files which are backed up hourly, weekly, monthly and yearly.

Phil Baker, client services manager at Parseq, said: "Disaster recovery is vital for service providers such as Intelligent Environments as it safeguards their company assets and provides them with confidence that if a server should crash operation can continue without disruption.

"Understandably they want to know their data is supported by a robust infrastructure. Parseq has a high security facility in Rotherham with ISO 27001 certification for information security management."

The purpose built site meets international banking standards and is flood proof, earthquake proof and benefits from 24/7 security and back-up generators.

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News: Iceotope chosen for Clean and Cool mission

Iceotope, the hi-tech firm based on the Advanced Manufacturing Park (AMP) in Rotherham, has been selected for an innovation mission to the U.S. cleantech capital, Colorado.

Working with the University of Leeds, the enterprise is developing a new system that reduces the power consumed in data centres by using liquid rather than air to provide cooling, eliminating the need for power-hungry fans.

Starting on November 30, the week-long Clean and Cool Mission to Colorado, organised by the UK's innovation agency, The Technology Strategy Board, together with The Long Run Venture and UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), will see the sixteen UK cleantech companies learn from key leaders in the field and network with potential investors in Boulder, Denver and Fort Collins – they will participate in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Industry Growth Forum, the premier clean energy investment event in the U.S.

As the number one U.S market for renewable energy and second best state for entrepreneurship and innovation, the Mission to Colorado will enable participants to learn first-hand how to accelerate their business in the important U.S market.

Iceotope's patented approach sees components encapsulated in 3M Novec, an inert and environmentally sound coolant.

The system uses just 80 watts of power to harvest the heat from up to 20 kilowatts of ICT use where it can also be reused for heating. The server also does away with the need for ancillary data centre facilities such as computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units, humidity control systems and air purification.

In the US, a massive $7.4 billion is spent on cooling data centres annually. The Iceotope solution typically reduces data centre cooling costs by 97%, ICT power load by 20% and overall ICT infrastructure costs by 50%.

Iceotope will be represented by Peter Hopton, the founder and inventor of the technology, as well as Keith Deakin who has engineered that vision into reality.

David Bott, Director of Innovation Programmes at the Technology Strategy Board, said: "The U.S has one of the most innovative and dynamic cleantech ecosystems. The Mission will provide the participants with the opportunity to establish partnerships, secure investment and help launch their business to a large, continually expanding and thriving technology market."

A spokesperson for Iceotope, said: "Iceotope's liquid cooled servers have the potential to halve the energy usage of supercomputing sites and will allow HPC [High-performance computing] users much greater freedom when designing, locating and building their facilities.

"Iceotope's heat harvesting technology has been designed with research facilities in mind and will provide a compelling alternative to the traditional, air cooled servers presented at the show, the likes of which most HPC facilities are still based."

Rotherham's Metalysis, based in Manvers, and Xeros Ltd, based on the AMP have taken part in the missions in previous years.

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News: New Parseq division to head Rotherham data centre facility

Leading business process outsourcing company Parseq has established a new division to take on the management of its data centre facility in Hellaby, Rotherham.

Parseq Data Centres will be responsible for overseeing the dedicated carrier co-location facility, which provides equipment space and bandwidth for rent to businesses.

It has increased floor space to 12,000 sq ft and can now accommodate up to 450 server racks – an increase of more than 100.

Mike Bullivant has been appointed to head up the company's sales team, with Parseq Data Centres employing around 12 members of staff at Hellaby.

Located within the 24/7 high security Parseq campus, the Tier 3 data centre has been designed to provide a flexible and sustainable IT environment for businesses.

Parseq Data Centres has invested heavily in network infrastructure to provide low latency, high capacity bandwidth available from BT, Virgin and the dedicated NHS network N3.

The design of the data centre, which initially opened in June 2011, also supports multiple rack installations or private suites, with availability from as little as a half rack open to businesses.

Mike Bullivant, sales manager at Parseq Data Centres, said: "It was important to establish a new operation which would work within Parseq to deliver a professional and efficient service to a range of businesses.

"Enhancing our purpose designed facility sets a new standard in terms of providing a flexible infrastructure for small and large companies in the region. It will enable Parseq Data Centres to work with even more businesses and this has already been demonstrated by the response from our new customers.

"We have businesses installing their equipment in the data centre right now and we look forward to working with more companies in the coming months and years."

The company specialises in mobile and online banking software and technology-led outsourcing services and was created in a successful reverse takeover by Rami Cassis and Rotherham-based BPO provider, Documetric in 2010.

The new company underwent a successful £33m management buy out concluded in 2012 led by Cassis, together with Nova Capital and funds managed by HarbourVest Partners, LLC.

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News: Onyx Group opens Rotherham datacentre

Onyx Group has officially opened its South Yorkshire datacentre in Rotherham, providing local businesses with a range of innovative and flexible solutions to their data hosting and management needs.

The Manvers centre also offers a comprehensive business continuity service that companies can use in the event of a disruption that can prevent them from accessing their offices.

Stockton business IT provider, Onyx Group, which specialises in business continuity, datacentre and cloud services, has heavily invested in the site to ensure it can provide the appropriate level of infrastructure, power, security and resilience to businesses that choose to host and secure their data at the facility.

The sheer scale of this datacentre, combined with its business continuity seats, is a unique and attractive offering for businesses in the region. It stands at 22,000 sq ft, providing high capacity data hosting and workplace recovery seats, which will provide space for 320 racks and 500 business continuity positions.

Neil Stephenson, CEO at the Onyx Group, said: "The datacentre will provide great benefits to Yorkshire businesses because it is unique in its approach as it can house all of a company's datacentre and business continuity services under one roof.

"Opening a facility like this is great news for the Yorkshire region as it demonstrates that businesses are keen to invest here and provide support to a thriving, innovative business hub which is fast becoming one of the UK’s key regions for growth."

The datacentre is one of 11 Onyx sites throughout the UK including London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, and Teesside. This includes five datacentres and six workplace recovery facilities.

Onyx Group website

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News: Iceotope relaunches on the AMP

Iceotope, producers of an innovative liquid cooling system for the IT industry, has moved on to the Advanced Manufacturing Park In Rotherham.

The hi-tech firm has taken an office and a workshop in the AMP Technology Centre as it launches a new system that reduces the power consumed in data centres by eliminating the need for any fans.

Iceotope has a patented approach to reduce power consumption by tackling the problem of cooling servers at the source of the heat at component level.

The components are encapsulated in 3M Novec, an inert and environmentally sound coolant, and all waste heat generated from the servers is used to passively pump the coolant solution through the system by encouraging a state of ultra-convection, thus removing the need for fans, chillers and airflow. Iceotope then transfers this heat to outside of the data centre and the heat can even be repurposed to heat other office spaces.

The company secured a million pounds of funding in 2009 but ended up entering administration in 2011. Original inventor Peter Hopton led the fund-raising to acquire the technology and the IP of the firm. His consortium included the original engineering team, backed by a seven figure investment sum.

Iceotope servers can reduce facility operating costs and carbon output. Data centres can save 20% of power consumption at the server level and make a saving of 97% of costs associated with cooling power, an overall reduction of over 50% for the typical data centre.

Peter Hopton, CTO of Iceotope, said: "With the data centre industry growing by 12% each year, data centre providers are struggling to keep up with demand for higher efficiency and higher density, while keeping power consumption and costs to a minimum. Iceotope's unique technology can help data centre providers to save half of all overall electricity costs compared to an average data centre.

"We need to start looking to technology that will help to not only reduce environmental footprint, but also help reduce the costs associated with power and cooling in data centre and HPC (High Performance Computing) environments. Through our research with Leeds University and 3M, we're excited about the impact our solution will have on data centre design and location."

As the AMP's incubation hub, The AMP Technology Centre offers 50,000 sq ft of office, laboratory and workshop space for hi-tech advanced engineering, manufacturing and sustainable energy companies.

Iceotope website

AMP Technology Centre

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News: Onyx Group to expand South Yorkshire datacentre

Stockton business IT provider, Onyx Group has announced plans to expand its Rotherham datacentre, increasing its ability to provide a range of resilient IT solutions to companies across the UK.

Onyx acquired the 22,000 sq ft Manvers datacentre in 2011 to firmly establish its position as a leading UK datacentre services business in the enterprise space.

The expansion follows a large investment deal worth £42m from ISIS Equity Partners (ISIS) in October 2011.

The fit out will develop a further 20,000 sq ft of high capacity data hosting and workplace recovery seats, which will provide space for 250 racks and 500 business continuity positions.

The Onyx datacentre provides local businesses with a range of innovative and flexible solutions to their hosting and data availability needs. It also offers a comprehensive business continuity service that companies can use in the event of a disruption that can prevent them from accessing their offices.

Neil Stephenson, CEO of the Onyx Group, said: "This is great news for the South Yorkshire region as it demonstrates that businesses are keen to invest here, creating more jobs and providing support to a thriving, innovative business hub in what is fast becoming one of the UK's key regions for growth."

The expansion is in recognition of the Digital Region project that is bringing continuous 25mb+ broadband to over 97% of South Yorkshire, including 550,000 homes and 1.3 million people. The project is financed by European, regional, local and private investment of over £90m, including £30m from the European Regional Development Fund.

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News: Parseq to support services business

The board of Parseq, which specialises in mobile and online banking software and technology-led outsourcing services, has published their half yearly results whilst they still consider a bid led by the company's own CEO.

Parseq was created last year following a successful reverse takeover by CEO Rami Cassis and Rotherham-based BPO provider, Documetric.

Results for the six months ended 30 June 2011 show that revenue for the period was £12.1m up from £5.2m for the corresponding period last year. The 134% increase was mainly due to strong performance in their software division due to new contract wins including a major mobile banking contract with O2.

The board added that the services division, which includes the Hellaby BPO facility in Rotherham had a disappointing first half performance but that it remains profitable and was cash generative at the operating level.

The period also saw Parseq launch a data centre at Hellaby and the first customer has been secured. The board hope that this will be a very attractive new area of business for us, creating a new revenue stream from a previously underutilised asset.

Richard Last, chairman at Parseq said: "We will continue to support the development of the Services business. We have taken necessary remedial actions over the past few months to develop a stronger management team with a more focused business. This means we go to market with clearly defined, standardised, replicable platforms that can deliver profitable growth in key areas of our core markets.

"There is also considerable opportunity to exploit the potential of the data centre which should support further revenue and profit growth."

He added that a due diligence exercise currently being undertaken regarding the bid being led by Rami Cassis.

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