Bytemark is a UK-based server hosting and datacentre provider, headquartered in

York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...

, United Kingdom. It was founded in 2002, and was the first provider of

virtual machines In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

and

cloud hosting Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over multip ...

through

User-mode Linux User-mode Linux (UML) is an architectural porting, port of the Linux kernel to its own system call interface, which enables multiple virtual Linux kernel-based operating systems (known as guests) to run as an application within a normal Linux sys ...

in 2003. In 2012, the company launched BigV, a public cloud platform designed in-house using

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

. In 2013, it moved into a £1.2 million datacentre and headquarters in York. In 2017, their BigV platform was renamed Bytemark Cloud. In September 2018, the company was acquired by iomart Group plc.

Environmental and ethical policies

Bytemark's datacentre uses fresh-air cooling, not common in the UK, and was shortlisted for Innovation in Medium Data Center at the DatacenterDynamics Awards EMEA 2013. Each of its servers is built using efficient power supplies as certified by the

80 Plus 80 Plus (trademarked 80 PLUS) is a voluntary certification program launched in 2004, intended to promote efficient energy use in computer Power supply unit (computer), power supply units (PSUs). Certification is acquirable for products that hav ...

scheme, which requires power supplies to be at least 80% efficient at up to 100% rated load. To reduce the bias found in traditional recruitment processes, the company developed their own anonymous recruitment process in 2015.

Awards

In 2014, Bytemark was named one of the Top 50 Fastest Grown Tech Companies in the North at the Northern Tech Awards with revenue growth of 44%. Financially, the company turned over £2.5 million in 2013. In 2014, this grew to £3 million. In 2015, the company was awarded the

Fair Tax Mark The Fair Tax Mark is an independent accreditation awarded by the Fair Tax Foundation after an assessment based on "Transparency ndtax rate, disclosure and avoidance"... As of January 2016, it is applicable to UK businesses. The process of assessi ...

Support of open-source projects

Bytemark has a history of contributing to and supporting

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

. They support

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source productivity software, office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was fork (software development), forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of t ...

through provision of a build server. In 2009, the company became a supporter of

XBMC Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open-source media player software application developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 10 ...

with the same. In 2012, they started supporting

Cyanogenmod CyanogenMod ( ; CM) is a discontinued open-source operating system for mobile devices, based on the Android mobile platform. It was developed as free and open-source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, with added origi ...

with build servers. In 2013, the company contributed hosting services worth £150,000 to the

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

project, having used Debian since the company was founded. The company also supports

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...

with

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...

services and servers to support version control, mailing lists and help pages. The company also support projects for social good, including sponsoring servers for

mySociety mySociety is a UK-based registered charity, previously named UK Citizens Online Democracy. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were open source, so that t ...

, who operate

FixMyStreet FixMyStreet is a free and open-source software framework by mySociety which enables anyone to run a website for aggregating and reporting street problems, similar to FixMyStreet.com. The United Kingdom FixMyStreet inspired similar sites in othe ...

TheyWorkForYou TheyWorkForYou is a parliamentary monitoring website operated by mySociety which aims to make it easier for UK citizens to understand what is going on in Westminster, as well as the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembl ...

and

WhatDoTheyKnow WhatDoTheyKnow is a site by mySociety designed to help people in the United Kingdom make Freedom of Information requests. It publishes both the requests and the authorities’ responses online, with the aim of making information available to all ...

References

{{reflist

External links

Bytemark
Companies based in York Companies established in 2002 Cloud computing providers Cloud platforms Data centers Web hosting