Centrica signs £250m datacentre deal

Energy firm Centrica has inked a $400m (£246m) seven-year outsourcing deal with HP, which will see the utility firm cut the carbon footprint of its IT operations.

Under the agreement, HP will manage Centrica’s transition to a private cloud, which will see its applications, infrastructure and services hosted from two UK datacentres, including HP’s flagship eco-friendly facility in Wynyard.

Datacentre support will be provided from HP’s global delivery centres in India, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The move comes as the energy industry gears up for the widespread adoption of smart meters. These are intended to make it easier for households to manage their energy consumption and will be underpinned by the deployment of infrastructure to manage demand-based pricing.

“Centrica is striving to improve our ability to respond to market changes to supply gas and electricity to homes and businesses more efficiently,” said Dave Bickerton, group chief information officer, Centrica, in a statement.

As part of the deal, Centrica – parent company of British Gas – also has an eye on its own energy consumption. The Wynyard datacentre uses fresh air cooling to minimise its reliance on power-slurping coolers.

In November 2010, rival energy firm E.On announced it was to outsource its datacentre requirements to HP.

Such deals are likely to become more commonplace, as energy firms get to grips with the challenge of managing customers’ energy use data, said John O’Brien, research director at analyst group TechMarketView.

In future, suppliers will be aiming to take on “the management of the infrastructure and administration of billing and metering for these [energy] companies,” he added.

Centrica had previously outsourced part of its datacentre operations to T-Sytems.