Yorkshire Water Services seeks LAN installation partner

Yorkshire Water Services (YWS) is seeking to implement a LAN that will provide a backup link to a secondary datacentre to be built next year.

The utilities company has issued a tender notice inviting potential suppliers to register interest in the project.

YWS is looking for an installation partner to provide vendor hardware and consultancy services for the network implementation.

The successful partner will design, deploy and test the solution, as well as provide ongoing support and maintenance.

"We are looking to build a secondary datacentre as part of our requirement as a utilities company to have a robust backup in place," explained Nicola Richardson, senior buyer at YWS.

"The new network will provide the connectivity between our existing datacentre and the new one," she added.

"We are in the process of building the second datacentre, but are looking to get the network installed at a similar time as we believe it would be more expensive to retrofit it," she added.

It was announced last month that YWS had signed a contract with datacentre solutions company 2bm to build the new datacentre, which will replace an 17-year-old existing facility.

The new datacentre will also have a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of below 1.2 – the industry average is 2.5.

YWS expects to have the 10-year contract for the network in place by early next year, and Richardson expects it will take approximately 12 months to install.