Multinational financial services group Legal & General has made a significant investment in Kao Data, a leading provider of wholesale colocation data centre services.

Kao Data opened Kao Data London One, the first of four 8.8MW data centres, at its 35.2MW Kao Data Campus around one year ago. The £230m data centre development has attracted widespread industry and customer interest for its innovative approach to design, construction and operations, the company claims.

This investment demonstrates a commitment from Legal & General and its partners to deliver the digital infrastructure required for Future Cities and marks the first step of an ambitious partnership with Goldacre Noé Group (Goldacre) to drive the strategic expansion and accelerated growth of the UK data industry.

According to a statement this week, the Kao Data London One facility provides a blueprint to develop further class-leading, hyperscale-inspired wholesale colocation data centres that implement OCP (Open Compute Project) recommended capabilities and offer this leading-edge approach to data centre flexibility and scalability.

Kao’s design will support its commitment to achieve market leading efficiency, strong resilience and excellent connectivity, whilst also retaining flexibility for customer specification requirements, the company says.

Kao Data London One is the first wholesale colocation data centre in the United Kingdom to utilise Indirect Evaporative Cooling with no mechanical refrigeration to maintain the ASHRAE TC9.9 environmental guidelines, delivering an ultra-low PUE <1.2 across all load levels.

Environmental monitoring initiatives have been implemented to check on gaseous contamination and ensure hosted IT equipment is maintained within manufacturer’s warranty requirements.

The power efficiency, resilience and low cost of operations are as a result of reduced electrical and mechanical engineering complexity, standardisation and increased speed of deployment. In addition, the data centre has attained the certification of BREEAM excellent, reinforcing the sustainability credentials of Kao Data Campus.

Kao Data’s strategic location, in the emerging North London cluster servicing the London to Cambridge corridor, is fast becoming a hub for high-density fibre connectivity routes from Dublin to Amsterdam. As key locations for hyperscalers, Kao Data can capitalise on emerging opportunities both in terms of industry and geography.

Kao Data’s platform model of highly functional and flexible colocation data centres is a design that can be replicated across most environmental and geographical locations, creating a highly cost effective and easily managed development process.

The massive year-on-year increase in data creation, as well as the growing need for agility and state of the art infrastructure, has led to an outsourcing shift from in-house facilities to a hybrid IT model of third party providers and multi cloud environments, resulting in an increase in demand for data centre and platform services. The partnership between Legal & General and Goldacre is focused on driving the necessary technology and infrastructure development to meet this rising demand.