With its second anniversary approaching, Technology Space Integration (TSI) has plenty to celebrate.

The company has attracted a prestigious client list, grown to a team of 29 staff globally and recently expanded to include a production facility at Kidlington adding to its headquarters site on the Oxford Science Park.

Established in February 2012 by managing director Simon Gardner and head of projects Neil Fraser, TSI operates in the niche market of high performance computing and is now the established leader in data centre provision for organisations needing to store and process massive amounts of data rapidly, securely and efficiently.

In addition to Oxford’s Churchill Hospital, where TSI has installed a data centre to store 100 years’ worth of digitised patient records, clients include Cowley logistics firm Unipart, Formula One teams, Red Bull, Mercedes and Force India; car manufacturers, Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin and Peugeot Citroen; as well as aeronautical engineering firms Rolls-Royce and Airbus.

Then there are global IT companies, IBM and Hewlett Packard; Sainsbury's and Ocado supermarkets, Oxford, Warwick and Bristol universities and the Ministry of Defence.

Mr Gardner and Mr Fraser, both electrical engineers by training, bring 30 years of experience from the data industry.

The rest of the TSI team are highly skilled mechanical and electrical engineers, computer aided design specialists and IT experts, based in Oxfordshire and TSI’s offices in France, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Africa.

The company handles the entire process for data centre creation, from design to construction including ground works where necessary.

These centres are large container units that house a variety of IT equipment including high density data racks, starting at 15kw to 40 kw per rack.

The modular units do not require planning permission and TSI can produce a fully constructed centre in about four weeks, which compares to historical lead times of six months.

TSI’s design team designs each centre to meet client requirements and uses computational fluid dynamics software to model the centre by individual rack through to the finished room, analysing how it will function. This rigorous approach avoids surprises during testing and construction.

Mr Gardner said: “With the transportable data centres, our unique selling point is that from receipt of order to delivery is typically four weeks and our centres are ready for use on delivery so all that the client needs to do is to plug in the servers.

“This means clients can plan their IT strategies with flexibility and ease of deployment as priorities. We are also the only data centre company in the world whose products have been tested and certified by Lloyds of London so we are able to fully insure the goods when they need to be shipped overseas.”

TSI’s first client was the Red Bull F1 team — and the company is currently handling the design and build of its new high-performance data centre housing a large number of 35 kw racks.

In common with other F1 teams and car manufacturers, Red Bull uses high performance computing to model the design and performance of cars while aeronautical engineering firms will model components for new aircraft particularly for airflow management.

For example, Airbus used a data centre supplied by TSI to model the wings of its A380 aircraft, the world’s largest passenger airliner.

An additional requirement in F1 is for remote monitoring which involves a team of F1 engineers using a data centre located away from the track to analyse real time data on the car’s performance during the race to predict scheduling of pit stops.

Supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s and Ocado require data centres for stock control and the ability to move the centres whenever their warehouse depots change locations is an important benefit.

TSI has also signed partnership agreements with major companies, with the largest client being IBM.

TSI creates data centres for IBM’s end clients in the UK and overseas and has recently shipped centres to Mozambique, the Middle East, South Africa and Pakistan for use in cities and rural locations, at satellite stations or for remote banking operations.

The company is also working with the MoD on data centres for deployment in Afghanistan and prides itself on adapting the centres to the requirements of different locations, ensuring that they are robust and work efficiently in extreme temperature conditions.

While TSI has earned a reputation for supplying innovative solutions that work, the company is constantly innovating to meet client demands for new and improved solutions.

Mr Gardner said: “We want to remain at the forefront of technology and grow our portfolio of products and services.

“For example, we have developed bespoke remote management software so we can monitor clients’ sites anywhere in the world for them on a 24/7 basis.

“We will launch the software at Data Centre World in February and offer the service to all existing clients and new customers,” he added.

“We enjoy the challenges that need to be addressed each day — it is extremely satisfying when you are given a problem and you solve it.” * This page is co-ordinated by Oxford Innovation www.oxin.co.uk