Specific details of the contract remain confidential. The 10-year deal provides services at a new-build, 92,000 square foot (8,500m2) data centre, situated outside the M25 but close enough to the City of London to meet requirements for minimal latency from financial sector customers.

As a result of this contract COLT will extend its data centre footprint to 15 across the main business and financial centres of Europe, and open its third data centre in the UK. The new facility will enable COLT to expand its portfolio of managed services to major customers in the UK, offering secure, off-site application and hosting solutions.

The new win represents sixty per cent of the initial build phase of 27,000 square feet. The data centre will start to provide capacity in late 2007. Further clients are currently seeking to secure capacity over the four-year build. As a purpose-built facility the data centre will meet the current and future security and availability requirements of finance sector organisations in particular, and takes full advantage of the 25MVA power supply from the National Grid.

Commenting on the announcement, Lakh Jemmett, Managing Director of COLT's UK operations said, "This contract win confirms our commitment to extending high quality data centre capacity in the UK. It allows COLT to offer a step-change in managed services to its major European business customers.

"This platform positions us to accelerate our capabilities in the UK with a new, ground-up, state-of-the-art facility. It is a specific step forward in COLT's goal to become a leader in next generation solutions for major national and international customers.

"Our customers are being driven by a huge increase in regulatory requirements which is not going to let up any time soon. For example, the MIFiD initiative on its own has driven a major increase in the need to offer more capacity and innovative support tools to the commercial banking and securities communities, and we are delighted to be able to respond to those needs, both now and in the future, with a facility of this capability.'