New use cheers East End site

Abandoned brewery gets new life as an ecommerce centre.

The Old Truman Brewery in East London is set to become a major centre of ecommerce technology.

The former brewery now houses some 250 companies ranging from co-location sites to data warehouses, and from web consultants to dotcom startups.

The site has a fibre optic broadband connection that tenants may pick from a varying level of bandwidth provided by the 12 different carriers connected to the site.

Robert Edsell, operations director of web consultants NovoScape, settled in the brewery with the intention of setting up a co-location site, but said that the required £100m investment discouraged him. Instead, he set up a consultancy and media company that found a ready circle of customers at the site itself.

Edsell said that the brewery was an ideal place for companies which wanted to get web presence quickly, as all necessary technology and skills are in place.

"It stimulates the cross-fertilisation of skill sets that can be found within the technicians, telecommunication managers and artists who work here," Edsell said.

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) has also leased space at the brewery to offer its members co-location and access to the LINX Peering Lan. CEO Roland Perry said that the site offers resilience and redundancy to its members' networks.

"The conversion has been a great success and it's a credit to everyone involved how everything has turned out," Perry said.

"The building allows LINX to offer a high level of service and is an excellent use of the space available."

The site housed a brewery from the 16th century until it was abandoned in the mid 1980s.