A DATA centre business set up by Royal Bank of Scotland at the height of the dotcom boom is eyeing a push into the west of the country as it looks to double turnover over the next four years.
Scolocate, which runs one of Scotland's largest so-called "internet hotels", providing corporates and smaller businesses with remotely-hosted computer services, was set up in 1999.
After surviving the dotcom crash and a management shake-up in
2001, the firm booked sales of £4.5 million in 2006-7. It remains 80 per cent owned by RBS.
Managing director Roy Maxwell said he was keen to grow the operation beyond its current 44,000sq ft facility, located in the South Gyle area of Edinburgh, as demand for high-security "co-location" space grows.
"We want to expand the business within Scotland and would like a location in the west," he said. "It's really down to the right facility being available.
"Even though our customers can be located anywhere, there are still many that like to be relatively close to the heart of their systems.
"We have to plan capacity wise," Maxwell added. "At some stage in the next couple of years we will hit the space barrier."
Scolocate, which was ranked as the eighth-fastest-growing technology company in Scotland in last year's Deloitte Fast 500, believes it will take about four years to double turnover, "given current market conditions".
Although new-build remains an option for any additional facility, Maxwell said moving into an existing building would be preferable.
Demand for remote hosting of internet equipment and computer services has mushroomed amid security and power-outage concerns and new legislation demanding e-mails be kept for at least seven years. A series of scandals involving lost data has also heightened awareness of the issue.
"We see more and more demand coming from small and medium-sized companies," Maxwell added.
"They need something that's always on – businesses can't afford for the web to go down. What we do underpins so much of Scottish business, but most people are unaware of it."
Over the past 18 months or so, Scolocate has invested some £1.8m on generators and additional cooling equipment.
"It's difficult to say that we are a green industry as we consume a lot of electricity," admitted Maxwell. "However, what we can do is mitigate as much of that as we can. Our electricity has to be from renewable sources."
The full article contains 418 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
