The Wired Workplace has won the tender to create the £2.4 million, 25,000 sq ft centre at Platts Common in Barnsley.

Its success comes three months after The Wired Workplace launched its own hi-tech data centre at The Workstation in Sheffield.

Wired Workplace’s existing centre can house up to 600 servers with the ability to store 300 terabytes of data – enough information to fill almost a third of a million encyclopaedias.

The new facility is the brainchild of the European Union-funded Objective 1 regeneration programme, which first identified the need for a top tier data centre for South Yorkshire businesses.

Cash from Objective 1 and regional development agency Yorkshire Forward will fund the new centre, which is being delivered by Business Link South Yorkshire and is due to open in March next year.

Further investment is coming from the Platts Common site’s owner, property developer Mount City, which joined forces with The Wired Workplace to submit the successful tender.

Wired Workplace managing director Bob Cushing said: “This new datacentre is being designed to meet the needs of organisations of all sizes.

“The issue of how and where to store your data is particularly relevant after this summer’s flooding, from which many businesses are still recovering. Companies learned the hard way that an effective disaster recovery plan needs to go much further than making weekly back-up tapes and we are already seeing increasing interest in off-site data storage and application hosting as a result.

“Questions such as ‘have we got the right data backed up?’ and ‘how quickly can we get back up and running?’ need to be answered as well, which is where our technical support team comes in.”

Data centre customers will be supported by a specially trained team of technicians who will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

According to a Yorkshire Forward study, business computer use will rise by 85 per cent across the region over the next 18 months and an increasing number of businesses are reaping the demonstrable economic benefits of trading online.

“All of this growth will require secure, robust data storage and website hosting and many businesses realise it makes much more sense to outsource this to a customised facility rather than trying to manage it yourself,” says Bob Cushing.

Steve Wragg, head of Information and Communication Technology and E-Business at Business Link has been closely involved with the project from the start.

He says: “The adoption of ICT is a key driver to business growth in South Yorkshire.”