After more than 12 months of planning and preparation, the time to restart our famous Build Blog is finally here.
Many of our readers will probably remember the first iteration of this feature, which we ran throughout the build of our London Central facility, from initial shell to complete data centre.
We’ll be doing exactly the same for this exciting new project, documenting progress as the new data centre takes shape in the coming months.
So here we are, on what is effectively week one of the build project, having taken full control of the new site in early April.
An introduction
While this is week one for the Netwise team and its range of expert contractors, the new site has in fact already undergone a full shell refurbishment and stage one office fit-out, ahead of any project-specific works being undertaken.
These works have seen the complete overhaul of the building to ensure it met our extremely high standards ahead of conversion to a top specification data centre.
This first set of photos show the facility in this completed stage one form; an introduction to the space as we begin conversion this month.
Exterior front elevation, shown from the large front compoundA view from the rear of the main warehouse areaAnother view from back to front in the main warehouse spaceThe main warehouse space, viewed from the front, with the existing amenities block in viewA view across the main warehouse spaceA look at the feature staircase in our reception areaA brief look at some of the existing ground floor amenitiesA view up the main stairwell, to the office and future NOCA view across the office and future NOC areaAnother view across the future NOC, to what will eventually become the main screen wall for the NLE engineering team
The blank canvas we’ve been left with following the stage one refurbishment is nothing short of fantastic. We elected to pre-stage this work to ensure no overlap with the main project.
Beyond an illustrative overview of the empty spaces we’re currently presented with for conversion, there naturally isn’t really much to see at this stage. But we do hope that this gives a good early indication of the overall scale and quality of finish being pursued here, something our London Central data centre is already well-known for.
What’s next?
The first couple of weeks will see major transformations in the office area, so that on-site technical operations can begin immediately. We are also onlining a temporary 10Gbps extension to our metro network, connecting the site to our existing fabric to allow for remote monitoring and administrative works on-site to be undertaken without hindrance.
The next primary stage on the heavy construction side will see the installation of the mezzanine and envelope, including walls, ceilings and raised floors, to create the four data hall design in the main warehouse side of the building.
Next week, we will share more information with you regarding technical specifications and drawings, to give a full overview of what to expect from the data centre.
To say that we’re excited is an understatement! We hope this Build Blog can serve as an interesting distraction for everyone in this industry during these difficult times.
We look forward to sharing this journey with you. Keep an eye out for new entries to the Build Blog – subscribe to our RSS feed, YouTube channel and other social platforms for notifications.
Just as quickly as the new year begins, investment continues in earnest as we roll out our brand new Supernode core network architecture, enabling enhanced 100Gbps+ capabilities across our metro network.
Our core node in Telehouse received the steroid treatment mid-March, upgrading to a much larger ASR chassis, providing further interconnection capacity as we maintain the steep upward growth trajectory of our network. Telehouse now functions as our first on-net Supernode, handling masses of fibre connections that mix in and out of our multi-site network.
You can take a look at a compressed time-lapse of the upgrade work being undertaken here:
Beyond the full node rework in Telehouse, all on-net nodes have received line card upgrades that enable the enhanced operational capabilities we require as we head steadfast into 2020.
Looking further ahead, we’re also adding a brand new core POP to our metro network in Q2 2020, which will be officially announced in a few weeks. This will further increase our on-net capabilities as we gear up for what will be the largest evolution in our service offering since launching the London Central data centre in 2016 – more on that very soon!
We’re very excited to introduce you to the latest member of the growing Netwise team. Meet Graham Cornell, our new Technical Manager.
Graham has actually been working with us for some time now, forming part of our Technical Support team (namely our Data Centre Supervisor). Any regular visitors to our London Central data centre will have very likely had the pleasure of meeting Graham at some point in time.
Graham has a long history working in the data centre industry, having spent 6 years with Pulsant, and formerly holding a position with Telecity in the early years of their development cycle.
Graham’s promotion to Technical Manager comes as Netwise enters the next phase of its growth journey, making this role extremely important to the ongoing operational success of the organisation as upper managerial focus shifts to the next chapter in our development cycle.
Graham will oversee the technical operation of our facilities, working closely with Alex, our Facilities Manager, to keep client-facing services and internal infrastructure operating flawlessly around the clock. This will also extend to project work, developing new innovative systems and technologies to aid future growth.
Netwise was first incorporated on the 8th December 2009, making December 2019 a time of celebration – 10 years in business, doing what we love!
On the 13th December, we got together with friends, family, customers and suppliers to honour the occasion at Swingers West End, with great food, drinks, and of course a round of mini-golf!
This is quite the milestone for Netwise, a venture which started life in its earliest form way back in 2005, in the loft of Matthew’s family home. Not an ideal location of course, but it’s where the chips would begin to fall in favour of the organisation becoming a reality just a few years later.
In commemoration of the 10th birthday event, we’ve put together a gallery of photos from the evening, which you can browse below:
We hope everyone in attendance enjoyed themselves, and we look forward to welcoming you back to our future milestone celebrations as we continue to grow and evolve in the coming years.
Our guests on the night also got first eyes on our anniversary picture book, which gives an overview of the last 10 years at Netwise. Be sure to ask for a look when you’re next in at our London Central data centre!
We also have a video of the night coming in January, so keep an eye out for that on our socials.
As we head towards our 10th birthday this December, we’ve drastically changed the way we look, both to celebrate 10 years in business, and also to reimagine our brand for the next 10 years of doing what we love.
It’s fair to say that over the last 10 years, we’ve changed a lot. The earliest iteration of what would eventually become Netwise actually started life way back in 2005, in the loft of Matthew’s parents’ house, which had been converted to house a small collection of IBM tower servers. Over the next few years, this would lead into the beginnings of Netwise Hosting, which incorporated in 2009.
The early days, while always coloured with the build and ownership of private infrastructure, focused on almost entirely on enterprise dedicated servers, with a side-focus on small-scale per unit colocation for clients with their own hardware.
As the business quickly developed, and the move to building the company’s first private data centre came to the fore in 2011, Netwise would very rapidly move into the colocation space more completely.
Netwise is now a fully-featured turnkey colocation and connectivity specialist, operating from its flagship 11,000sq ft London Central data centre in Bermondsey – the second private facility built in-house by the Netwise team.
Our bold new look
Dropping the ‘hosting’ portion of our name is only the headline change here. Beyond this, the entire look and feel of our brand has been completely reimagined.
We’ve always been known for our signature orange, which we had front-and-centre for many years early on. This did then become more of an accent colour as we moved from London South to London Central, however it always formed a prominent part of our identity. Our longest-standing customers will likely remember our (extremely) orange data hall floor at the London South data centre!
The orange has now been muted slightly, and serves as the primary accent colour to our new headline shade, which is a purple-tinted grey.
This far better embodies the characteristics we’re known for, more now than ever before. These include quality, security, robustness and professionalism – with an injection of real personality, something our customers hold very dear to their relationships with us.
The design, both of the bold new corporate identity and exciting new website, comes courtesy of leading design studio Juice London. This process started many months ago, with plenty of on-site meetings here at the Netwise HQ to discuss the visual direction, delving deep into what Netwise is at its core, and how best to represent this publicly as we grow.
Juice also spent a huge amount of time completely rethinking the website, both for desktop and mobile users, with a deep-dive into UX and UI, giving users the cleanest possible experience when interacting with us online.
Visitors to the new site will also see that, as part of the new look, we’re now running almost exclusively with black and white photography (sometimes with a purple-grey overlay), which gives our facility a timeless robustness befitting of our current standing in the industry.
The new look is head and shoulders above our legacy design, and something that will serve us very well as we head into our second decade of doing what we enjoy most.
Let’s get technical
Let’s talk about the new website; a slightly deeper chat than normal, as we’re sure our more technical readers will appreciate the added information.
This was a ground-up rebuild, starting from scratch, using the Bootstrap (4) framework as a starting point, which gives the out-of-the-box responsive front-end goodness we needed for a speedy deployment. This, coupled with the comprehensive design plans we received from Juice London, allowed for the front-end to be built out very quickly.
The main front-end came together nicely across a two to three week period, running on the new domain which sat completely separate from the existing domain. This allowed us to quickly sketch out design adjustments and alterations for immediate testing, with our Git and auto-deployment working seamlessly in this test environment.
Once we had the front-end together, but lacking some of the more complex functionality required for the colocation calculator and status pages, we were able to bring our long-time collaborator and development wizard Josh, owner of software house Grizzlyware, in-house for a week of pre-deployment works.
Grizzlyware proved to be an invaluable partner in developing our new colocation calculator, which has again been built from the ground up, giving much improved functionality, accuracy, and intrinsic security.
For the final stages of development, we converted the site from a PHP-based, dynamic, server-side site to a completely flat, minified static site, built using Node.js / NPM and deployed in both staging and production versions. This has made the new site extremely fast to load, and relies less on server-side processing in delivering content to end users.
This also bolsters the security of our digital assets, given that the site is now built ahead of being pushed to production, without need for any intensive server-side processing ahead of content delivery.
Our future as Netwise
The future as Netwise looks as bright as ever, which matches our shiny new brand perfectly!
We’re entering into a period of rapid development and expansion; as we head into 2020, we’ll be firming up plans for our next major step, which will involve a second private, bespoke data centre.
To keep abreast of these developments as they happen, keep an eye on our new latest news section, which forms part of our new website.
