About us | Our story

This is our story

Founded in 2009, with a genesis story stretching back further still, Netwise started life as a passion project by two school friends with a love for technology. Fast forward nearly a decade, and we are now one of the UK's leading colocation service providers, with private facilities designed and built entirely in-house, delivering end-user content on a truly global scale.

In just 10 short years, Netwise has grown from a simple dream into one of the UK's most applauded multi award-winning data centre operators.

Here's how we did it...

2005 Early beginnings

In the summer of 2005, high school friends and founders of Netwise, Matthew Butt and Matt Seaton, decided to give game server hosting a try.

Starting life as an after-school passion project, Matthew sourced 12 old IBM servers from a clearance company and created a small hosting platform in the loft of his parents home.

2007 An era of traction

After securing private commercial premises, we evolved into a credible hosting services business and fully-featured service provider.

Netwise became a limited company in 2009. This marked an era of real traction for us – developing the brand and the service set, and building a solid base of high-quality enterprise customers.

2011 Our first data centre

In order to maintain total end to end control over our service set, we elected to build our first private data centre in 2011.

This bespoke facility, named London South, enabled us to grow dramatically over the following three years, with the facility reaching capacity in 2013. Our first proof of concept facility proved an enormous success.

2014 Our second data centre

After reaching capacity in our London South facility, we began the design and build of data centre two; London Central.

We upscaled enormously, moving to an 11,000ft² facility in Bermondsey, our new flagship data centre and HQ.

2016 London Central opens

After a two year design and build phase, London Central opened to new and existing customers in early 2016.

As our second fully-featured build project, London Central quickly became one of the UK's most applauded privately operated data centres.

2020 Our third data centre

In early 2020, we began the build of our third private data centre, Netwise London East.

Constructed in Canning Town - a short distance from the major Docklands data centre hub - London East will be the largest facility designed and deployed by Netwise to date, set to house 256 racks.

2009

Established

2 Mins

Average ticket response

107%

Average annual growth

“

Netwise has been supporting the Edge network since the early days of prototyping and testing, so it is a logical evolution for them to formally lend their expertise as advisors during our continued growth and development.

J. Denne, Edge

Our people

We're a company that believes in having a good time while doing what we love, and we really do love what we do.

Matthew Butt

Managing Director

Since founding Netwise in 2009 at just 19 years of age, Matthew's entrepreneurial spirit, expertise in electrical engineering and business operations have paved the way for the company's success over the years.

Matt Seaton

Senior Manager

Matt has been with Netwise since the very beginning. His creativity and ability to turn his hand to anything made him an invaluable asset to the business in the early years, and Matt continues to play an integral role today.

Alex

Facilities Manager

Katie

Office Manager

Graham

Technical Manager

Petko

Support Supervisor

Guy

Support Engineer

John

Support Engineer

Nigel

Support Engineer

Tim

Support Engineer

Company news

Build Blog - Weeks 23 and 24

Aside from another pass for finishing trims, this element of the project is now complete – a great milestone in the envelope construction phase. The fire protection is now also nearing...

Read article

Build Blog - Weeks 20 to 22

What a three weeks we’ve had on-site here at NLE. The walls have really started to take shape, with the first floor data halls now visible, along with some of the main access corridor...

Read article

Build Blog - Weeks 18 & 19

Focus this time around has been on preparing the space for the walling contractors to begin their installation works. This has included the removal of some legacy cable containment...

Read article

View all