Datacenta is a leading provider of secure hosting, managed private cloud, network connectivity, online backup, email and Internet Access and Secure Information solutions.

We have been delivering hosting solutions for 10 years and have achieved certification against ISO27001 Information Security, ISO9001 Quality Management and ISO 14001 Environmental Management standards. We are members of the itSMF UK. Located in Bournemouth, on the central South coast of England with our own disaster recovery facility just 20 minutes away, we provide highly-resilient technical solutions to Central Government, Local Government, world-class Member Associations and web application development organisations.

We deliver secure and reliable services to sectors whose business and administration functions depend on secure and reliable services. We are co-located and work in partnership with the other members of the Kimcell group of companies, including a dedicated public sector ICT consultancy practice, (X-Net), and an Application Development practice (e-mango). Our business focus is on the Public, Utilities and Not-for-Profit sectors, and the Application Developer community that develops online solutions for them.

At Datacenta, we work with a customer to agree a Schedule of Services, in which not only are Service Levels and associated metrics defined, but also the nature, frequency and contents of Service Reviews. These Service Reviews are specifically orientated towards the individual customer’s business requirements and business cycles. The Reviews cover past performance together with current and future business needs, and from this we will propose any changes to the scope of the Schedule of Services and its associated Service Levels that the discussions suggest would be of benefit. Our proactive approach to delivering the very best solution to meet our customer's needs ensures that we work as a partnership, helping each other succeed.

At Datacenta Hosting we focus on four categories of service: Design, Build, Finance and Operate; Managed Services including centrally hosted services; and Managed Infrastructure. Within these Services, we offer a portfolio of service components, the applicability of each of which is discussed with our customer. Each component carries Standard Service Levels with it (often a range for each component, such as regular, enhanced, and premium level), and hence the result is a Service Level tailored to our individual customer’s requirements, but comprised of standard elements. Our customer may then wish to tighten or to relax certain elements. The resultant agreement, whether standard or modified, is captured in a service-specific Schedule of Services.

Our focus on designing and operating hosting and infrastructure services to meet the focused needs of our customers makes a winning combination.

Datacenta is passionate about providing support; we look down on call centres contemptuously and tiered help desk functions.

Customers are supported by a multidisciplinary team utilising staff from across our company. Each customer has a designated Service Engineer appointed, to manage the operations efficiently and smoothly. Our multidisciplinary team includes staff specifically chosen to meet the needs of the individual customer on a project-by-project basis. All our engineers are professionals with years of experience in helping provide solutions to ensure the smooth, optimised operation of your system. A Datacenta Engineer will work with you to understand your needs and continue to work with you to resolve any issues that may arise. Datacenta does not abandon its customers to the vagaries of complicated control panels. Our servers are maintained and configured by professionals; if your server needs configuration work, our engineers will change server settings as needed or update your domain - we'll do the work ourselves.

When customers choose Datacenta, they are putting an important part of their business in our hands; whether registering a domain name, co-locating a server in our secure facility, setting up an online backup and restore regime or arranging a dedicated internet connection.

We take our responsibility seriously, which is why we host and manage everything ourselves. This expertise means we are perfectly placed to advise on the best solution for your needs, now and in the future.

The term 'Secure Hosting' on our logo sums up what we care about. Security is often used as a reason for not pushing ahead with projects. However, we understand that security has to take into account all the information needs of the organization: the availability of the right information to the right people and the integrity of that information, without compromising its confidentiality. Risks have to be identified and handled appropriately; information is the lifeblood of an organisation, and there’s little merit in focusing so hard on its confidentiality that even your own staff can’t get at what they need for your organisation to succeed, or when they do it can’t be trusted. Our services are built from the ground up, and we incorporate a wide range of measures that mitigate or resolve concerns for security before they even begin, but without ever losing sight of the overall needs of your business.

We own and maintain our own Tier 3 – TIA-942 hosting facilities that offer a whole range of standards-compliant features including controlled computer room access, an onsite power substation and full environmental monitoring.

We do not resell floor or rack-space to any other hosting provider.

The server rooms are a restricted access zone that is protected with dual security locks and only appointed personnel approved by the Hosting Facilities Manager have access.

We don't look like a hosting facility from the outside and we are over 100 miles away from Central London and the problems that hosting systems there can bring. Staff accompany visitors at all times until they leave the premises.

All systems sit behind firewalls and packet-shaping technology to ensure reliability of service (and not merely connectivity). Access to Tier 1 IP is provided by steel-protected, diverse-routed, fault-tolerant circuits.

We offer CLAS-accredited and security-cleared personnel, to the highest levels attainable. New staff are vetted to HMG Baseline Personnel Security Standards, with job descriptions that detail their roles and responsibilities.

(We are going to stop there as we hope it is clear that we understand security and know how to deliver your services...)

Service Description

This service is all about the first class, professional yet friendly provision of services associated with the running of a secure, reliable, high performance platform supporting a customer’s business in the area of Collaboration Solutions.

Typically, Datacenta does not stipulate what those solutions should be, although as professionals in the field, we have a broad understanding of what might be applicable in a given customer’s environment (See Potential Application Solutions, later in this document).

Similarly we do not necessarily insist on any one hardware and/or software stack: we manage servers from vendors such as HP or Dell, running Operating Systems from Microsoft or flavours of Linux (Red Hat, Ubuntu, SUSE) or Solaris. Servers may be dedicated or virtualised, via VMWare usually. We do not mandate any particular database solution (Oracle, SQLServer, MySQL).

We offer load-balanced configurations, based on a selection of algorithms, to optimise performance, and failover configurations, of both warm and hot standby complexions. We also have a secondary data centre, some 12 miles from our primary site, to deliver true Disaster Recovery capabilities, even in the event of a “smoking hole”, total site destruction scenario.

In networking, Datacenta Hosting uses a range of tools to manage bandwidth and protect the site performance from attacks. We normally use a Packeteer Packetshaper to ensure that bandwidth is efficiently managed. Typically, a service will secure an initial burstable 40Mbps stream on each of our upstream peers. Services can be tuned to favour classes of traffic and so prevent persistent attacks on the service from interfering with normal legitimate traffic. Proactive monitoring allows us to throttle persistent abusers from any attempt to degrade service quality. Our servers are protected by a “defence-in-depth” strategy with multiple levels of firewall protection, both at the perimeter of our domain and internally between levels of infrastructure e.g. between application servers and database servers. Naturally, we provide anti-malware and anti-virus protection mechanisms, and we ensure patching is conducted proactively in respect of security updates to software. For backup/restore delivery, typically we use our own Hosted CrashplanPro Service (IL0,IL1/2) or Managed Secure Cloud Backup Service at IL3.

We free you up completely from the burden of managing all this - we design, build and configure the equipment, to a jointly-agreed specification. We can finance the whole thing too, if desired.

We own and control all our own infrastructure and equipment. We do not lease anything, not even the building in which we are located. With knowledgeable and skilled support staff in the same premises as our server hosting facilities, we deliver an honest and professional, yet friendly service. We do not rent rack space in other service providers’ facilities. We don’t operate a call centre; we nominate a lead engineer to support each solution. One call to the engineer ensures any problem is addressed in real time.

Potential Application Solutions

As mentioned earlier, Datacenta’s Collaborative Hosting service is essentially application-agnostic. However, having reviewed the application requirements of a number of potential clients, we can envisage that one might wish to consider a solution from amongst the following:

• I-Sense
• Citadel
• Horde
• Tine2.0

A detailed Statement of Requirements characteristically reveals a winner in due course.

Accreditation (Impact Level)

IL3

On boarding

After initial contact, an order will be raised, fully detailing the service that will be provided. Upon agreement to the order the service will be provisioned. Our target time for the whole process is 2 working days.

Off boarding

The standard minimum contract length is one year. After that time if the customer wishes to terminate his service he will provide 1 month’s notice, after which further time the service will be suspended. The customer will be liable for any outstanding charges incurred over the term of the contract. There is no termination charge. However, experience has shown the value of prudence in this regard; we allow a 1-week period following the date of service termination during which the customer may request us to reactivate it.

Only after that will Datacenta purge and destroy all customer data related to the service.