Kao DATA has appointed Cushman & Wakefield’s specialist data centre team to elevate the presence of its state-of-the-art campus at Kao Park, on the outskirts of London, and help foster future research discoveries and innovative breakthroughs for the sector.
Strategically located in the emerging London-Cambridge-Stanstead corridor, home to 1,400 life science businesses and 20 per cent of the country’s Life Science jobs, Kao Park is named after Charles Kao, who discovered the fibre optic cable in 1966.
Building on its tradition of innovation and new technology,Kao Park will be the first part of a new UK Enterprise Zone to be delivered and will be the only campus near London to provide occupiers with Grade A office accommodation (215,000 sq ft) and a state-of-the-art data centre, Kao DATA. The data centre at Kao Park will be one of the largest campus data centres in the UK.
Kao DATA, due to open in 2016, will attract a range of sector-specific Life Science businesses and organisations. The data centre’s hyper-connectivity, secure data resilience and scalable flexibility available to support future research and discovery activity.
David Bloom, Director of Kao DATA said: “Kao DATA is strategically positioned close to London, along the UK’s burgeoning life science’s belt, and will provide occupiers withsecure data resilience to support their businesses and future research. We have appointed Cushman & Wakefield’s specialist data team for its expertise in attracting specific data occupiers.”
Mark Trevor, Senior Director at Cushman & Wakefield, said: “As the birthplace of fibre optics, Kao Park has the legacy, workforce and supporting infrastructure to provide a world class data centre campus. We believe this model –which is a first for the UK – can create a genuinely innovative and virtuous ecosystem of tenants which will spawn research breakthroughs.
“There is huge potential for the Life Sciences sector to benefit from convergent technologies and this process will be supported and accelerated by this new generation campus with an on-site data centre at its heart.
“The connectivity, both from a physical and virtual perspective, that this site offers is unmatched and we expect to attract significant interest from both global occupiers and smaller organisations who want to benefit from this scalable and flexible site.”