Virtus Data Centres opened a state-of-the-art data centre in London back in March 2011. That facility originally offered more than 8,600 ft.² of technical space for customers. At the same time Virtus was also planning two future expansions to the Enfield Centre. The completion of the first of those expansions was just announced October 30. Phase 2 of Virtus Data Centres' London LON1 facility has added an additional 1 MW of power and 7,500 ft.² of usable space. The expansion was put in place to meet customer demand in the company's cloud, networking, systems integration, and enterprise solutions sectors. Virtus announced the expansion back in September. With the added power capabilities and additional floor space the company hopes to address both the current and future needs of customers requiring high-power systems. The main users of the new space will primarily be companies with virtual servers and cloud computing with heavy application needs. A second expansion project will now be undertaken with completion planned for the first quarter of next year. When all is said and done the data centre will include 4.2 MW of power and roughly 32,000 ft.² of usable space. It will make the London facility easily one of the largest in the growing UK data centre market. According to company officials, they are committed to their UK-based facilities as a means of providing robust, dependable, and resilient data centres to meet the growing demands of customers. Their plans for the final phase of the London centre are already finalized and ready to go. The LON1 data centre built by Virtus offers customers world-class connectivity along with resilient and robust high-speed networks. The expansion features state-of-the-art alarm and management capabilities along with new UPS power and N+1 cooling systems. Virtus Leading the Way A group of surveys this past spring indicated that while the UK is gradually adopted cloud computing, there's still a long way to go before they catch up with the United States. Investment in cloud computing and new data centres has been touted as one of the ways to speed up the adoption of the cloud. Virtus seem to be on the leading edge of that investment with their UK-based data centres. By making such a large facility easily accessible in the heart of London Virtus is staking its claim as one of the major players in the UK's emerging cloud market. Customers who sign on with them should find themselves on the leading edge of data centre advancements as well. It is a mutually agreeable scenario with benefits to both sides. As for those other companies thinking of investing in the UK cloud, the time for sitting on the fence is quickly coming to an end. Several European countries, including Germany and Iceland, are also vigorously promoting the building of more data centres in order to compete. Companies that wait too much longer are going to find themselves on the outside looking in. Those who get on board now, like Virtus, are going to do very well into the future.