Midcounties Co-operative moves all its data into Six Degrees cloud

One of the UK's largest co-operatives, Midcounties Co-operative, has moved all of its data to Six Degrees' Birmingham South data centre, taking advantage of the cloud provider's managed services in the process.

The company needed a robust solution to host the data and applications related to its entire suite of services, including food, healthcare, funeral care, travel, energy, childcare, flexible benefits and postal products.

It needed somewhere it could store the data, in addition to confidence the information would be correctly secured according to stringent data storage and transfer regulations in the highly sensitive healthcare, childcare, and finance sectors.

"Six Degrees has the relevant certification and expertise to ensure that our data is properly, and legally, managed and protected," said Aaron Clayton, Deputy CIO, at The Midcounties Co-operative. "Our partnership with them not only provides us with complete assurance but also the freedom to focus on achieving our core business objectives."

Six Degrees and Midcounties Co-operative have been working together for six years and this latest tie-up means Midcounties Co-Operative has peace of mind its data is safe at all times. Because the data centre is only located half an hour away from the company's headquarters, latency is kept to a minimum to ensure customer service levels can be maintained.

"All three of Six Degrees' data centres are ISO 27001 accredited and PCI DSS certified, giving customers like the Society the assurance that their data is secure," said Nick Marshall, head of data and colocation at Six Degrees.

"The Midcounties Co-operative has a dedicated pod contained in a branded, locked area essentially its own data centre, in its own space and environment, within the Six Degrees building combining the increased security of a separate IT environment with the improved operational performance and economics of using a Six Degrees data centre."