Data centres
Speechly Bircham provides a multidisciplinary service to the Data Centre industry to support suppliers, customers and specialist providers of software and infrastructure for managed services.
Every business sector, regulated or unregulated, relies on data centres to process and transmit data. Our focus on the Technology sector translates into an informed legal service that understands the operation of IT infrastructure - the business risks inherent in the hosted environment, and the measures necessary for ensuring continuity of service and security of information. This understanding is critical to informing our robust, commercial advice on outsourcing and cloud based services such as software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).
If you are developing, letting or fitting out a data centre we have over 70 real estate and construction lawyers. From future legislative implications around sustainability, to security of tenure, and physical access and security we have the expertise to guide you through.
We also offer highly specialised environmental, health and safety, employment and tax advice to support core operations.
We are noted for our expertise in highly regulated sectors, particularly Financial Services and the requirements of the FSA.
Our integrated approach builds in industry good practice and dispute avoidance. We cover compliance and risk management including audit and implementation projects, cross border data flows, outsourcing, information and technology security. Our deep understanding of the sector helps us advise and facilitate negotiations, using innovative negotiation techniques, including building robust contracts with a strong emphasis on effective corporate governance.
Examples of recent experience include:
- advising a major financial institution on data centre agreements, both in the UK and USA, with key service providers. This encompassed the negotiation of full service agreements for collocated data centre agreements, the fit out and operation
- advising a well known data centre operator on standard agreement for collocated and managed service
- advising a private bank on a pair of collocated data centre agreements for hosting of data in mainland Europe
- advising local authorities on managed services agreements with Netstore plc (now 2e2) in relation to their core financial systems
- advising an international bank on numerous proximity collocation agreements and ‘hands and eyes’ services agreements in proximity data centres with UK and European exchange proximity hosting service providers (e.g. UK, Nordics, Spain and Italy
- advising an IT services client on crisis management and issues arising from the failure of a credit card payment system. This led to the successful avoidance of claims from retailers and retail banks
- advising a venture fund investment in relation to an offsite electronic data storage business
- advising a UK bank on offsite capacity/grid computing services agreements
- advising a private bank on managed services agreements on FSA material outsourcing contract with UK data centre operator
- advising a property company on outsourced desktop service agreement with UK tier 2 outsource service provider.