DCN August 2016 | Page 7

industry news InfraVia acquires a majority stake in Next Generation Data InfraVia Capital Partners (InfraVia) and UK data centre operator Next Generation Data (NGD) have announced the acquisition by InfraVia European Fund III (InfraVia III) of a controlling stake of NGD for an undisclosed amount. NGD’s founders, Simon Taylor (chairman) and Nick Razey (CEO), will remain significant shareholders in the company. NGD opened its flagship 750,000ft2 data centre in south Wales in early 2010. The data centre includes its own private connection to the National SuperGrid with up to 180MW of power (sufficient to power a city the size of Bristol) generated from 100 per cent renewable sources. NGD has attracted large multi-national clients including a number of major cloud computing service providers. These require secure, resilient and scalable data processing and storage facilities for hosting cloud, Big Data and high performance computing infrastructures. Investment from InfraVia will enable NGD to accelerate future growth: it will be used for the expansion of existing UK data centre capacity, including the addition of a second site and connection of further high speed transatlantic fibre communications networks. The funding will also be made available for stepping up international sales efforts, especially in North America and Asia. ‘We have been impressed by the momentum achieved by the management team and we believe that NGD is ideally positioned to capture further growth thanks to its unique offering, flexible expansion potential and high quality infrastructure,’ commented Vincent Levita, founder and CEO of InfraVia. ‘We are delighted to start the deployment of our third fund with NGD and our ambition is to provide the company with long term institutional capital to embark into a new development phase.’ IP EXPO EUROPE ANNOUNCES 2016 EVENT FOCUSING ON THE FUTURE OF THE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY IN THE WAKE OF BREXIT IP Expo Europe has launched its 2016 IT showcase, to take place on 5th-6th October 2016 at ExCeL in London. Following the success of last year’s event, IP Expo Europe has announced a collection of influential speakers who will be holding keynotes over the two day event focusing on the six themes of Cloud, Cyber Security, Networks and Infrastructure, Data Analytics, DevOps, and new for 2016, Open Source. In the wake of an elected Brexit, this year’s IP Expo Europe will explore how this change will impact the current demand for tech skills with a look to the demands of businesses in the future and the growth in technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence (AI). It will answer the many questions that businesses may have about the future of their companies through a series of seminars and speaker programmes as well as address the fears that many IT professionals may have regarding the future of the workplace. With six sub-events under one roof, IP Expo Europe 2016 is expected to attract a broad audience of enterprise IT professionals and enthusiasts to discuss how to evolve their businesses into a more technical future that embraces advancements like AI and network with other likeminded professionals in the industry. Bradley Maule-ffinch, director of strategy for IP Expo Europe, commented, ‘After record interest last year – 14,600 attendees across the two days – we are looking forward to a real buzz of activity at IP Expo Europe 2016, driven by the wealth of knowledge and future gazing our range of high profile speakers will provide, in combination with the rise and adoption of emerging technologies in the enterprise. We are also extremely excited to introduce the Open Source Europe sub-event, which is sure to create excitement among the IT leaders and professionals.’ For further information and to register for free for IP Expo Europe 2016, please visit: www.ipexpoeurope.com. 7