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Technology leadership in the cloud

Q88 has a pedigree stretching back over 20 years. Since 2008 our technologies have proved themselves in the cloud, outlasting many other industry solutions. Q88 provides the technology leadership to help our customers migrate from inefficient legacy applications and manual practices to modernize and achieve digital transformation for their core business.

Q88 deploys on Rackspace

Q88 deploys in a true SaaS business model. To meet performance and security demands, Q88 selects Rackspace, London to host the primary production environment.

Primary data center – London, UK 

The London data center is a world-class facility strategically located in close proximity to main fiber routes. The site features a state-of-the-art carrier-neutral network, environmental infrastructure, a diverse UK grid connection, and is compliant with global standards for quality and information security management.

The London data facility is part of a global infrastructure which extends across the US, UK, EU, India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, providing services to customers in over 120 countries, including two-thirds of the FORTUNE® 100.


Application availability

The cloud infrastructure is a highly resilient environment for business-critical apps and data. This is overseen by specially-trained, highly-experienced system and network engineering staff who actively manage and maintain the facilities 24x7x365. Hosting services are underwritten by guarantees which govern availability and performance of network, infrastructure and hardware.

Uptime of 100% is guaranteed with a similar assurance that the infrastructure within the data center will be functioning without disruption for 100% of the time. This excludes instances of scheduled or emergency maintenance. In the event of an outage a Service Level Agreement sets out remediation to fix the fault and restore service within 60 minutes.

Planned maintenance that requires taking Q88 software and information services offline is scheduled on a Saturday every 6-8 weeks, with just about all occurrences scheduled between  23:00 – 00:00 GMT.

Uptime history – unplanned

Unplanned outages
Year Availability
2011 99.992009%
2012 99.991438%
2013 99.994292%
2014 99.994292%
2015 99.982877%
2016 100%
2017 99.999943%
2018 99.999914%
2019 99.98932%
2020 99.98742%

Back-up and Disaster Recovery

Q88 databases are mirrored to a Disaster Recovery server in a location separate from the operational server environment. All ‘live’ data is continuously replicated, backed up off-site from the primary data center using double encryption during transmission. Should it be unable to restore service at the primary data center, the Disaster Recovery facility is used to restart application services.

Data center certifications

  • ISO 27001 Certified
  • ISO 9001 and BS7799 Compliant
  • HIPAA Compliant
  • PCI Level 1 Service Provider Certified
  • SSAE16 Certified
  • Tier III Standards Compliant

What is a Tier III data center?

A Tier III data center is concurrently maintainable, allowing for any planned maintenance activity of power and cooling systems to take place without disrupting the operation of computer hardware located in the data center.

KPIs typical of a Tier III data facility

  • 99.982% uptime
  • No more than 1.6 hours of downtime per year
  • N+1 fault tolerant providing at least 72 hour power outage protection

Uptime history – planned & unplanned

Unplanned & maintenance outages
Year Availability
2011 99.900685%
2012 99.900114%
2013 99.902968%
2014 99.902968%
2015 99.891553%
2016 99.954338%
2017 99.986301%
2018 99.998630%
2019 99.97185%
2020 99.96133%

Physical security

A stringent range of measures supports a robust approach to physical security.

  • No public access 
    • Public access to data centers is strictly forbidden. No 3rd party equipment is hosted. Only the hosting facility’s Engineers are allowed into the data center.
  • Video surveillance 
    • Live video surveillance of all entrances to buildings and data halls is monitored 24 hours per day to ensure that only authorized personnel enter sensitive areas
  • Onsite security personnel 
    • Onsite security personnel monitor data center buildings 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
  • Biometric security & pass cards 
    • Biometric hand scanners are used to control Engineer access to restricted areas. Access to and movement within each facility is restricted to those who hold a pass card.

Power systems

Each data center gets its power from commercial utility underground conduits with a 10 minute battery backup in the event of failure. The UPS power subsystem is N+1 redundant with instantaneous failover in case the primary UPS fails.

Additionally, multiple diesel generators with full-load capability, are on standby and automatically start to provide long-term power in the event of an emergency. The power subsystems are designed to switch over immediately with no interruption in the event of a power failure.


Environmental control

N+1 redundant HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning) system ensures a duplicate system immediately comes online in the event of an HVAC system failure. Air is circulated and filtered to remove dust and contaminants and advanced fire suppression systems are in place.


Internet connectivity

Nine network providers serve each data center providing multiple redundancy for internet connectivity. Fiber carriers enter at different points to guard against failure and only enterprise-class routing equipment backed with full redundancy is used.


Q88 application delivery

To accelerate internet performance and deliver Q88 software and data rapidly to users where ever they are, Q88 partners with a world leading Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider. It has the most highly-distributed CDN with more than 210,000 servers in over 120 countries and within 1450 networks around the world.


Security and compliance

  • Encryption 
    • All sensitive Q88 database information is encrypted. During transmission Q88 uses the TLS encryption protocol, the same adopted for online banking. Electronic ‘certificates’ encode all communications using a 2048 bit RSA key and 256-bit encryption.
  • Privacy and protection of customers’ hosted data 
    • Hosting Q88 in London means that the European Union General Data Protection Regulation governs the data stored by our clients. In creating a robust standard for the protection of personal identifiable information, the GDPR creates a framework that strengthens business IT security.
    • Should the UK exit the EU, the UK’s regulatory controls will be equivalent or exceed the GDPR standard.
  • EU data processed by US companies 
    • The EU-US Privacy Shield decision was adopted on 12 July 2016 and the Privacy Shield framework became operational on 1 August 2016. The Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield applies for Switzerland.
    • These frameworks are designed to provide companies on both sides of the Atlantic with a mechanism to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States in support of transatlantic commerce.
    • These frameworks protect the fundamental rights of anyone in the EU and Switzerland whose personal data is transferred to the United States for commercial purposes. The framework also brings legal clarity for businesses relying on transatlantic data transfers.
  • What about Rackspace and access to our data? 
    • Rackspace has no knowledge of the data (including any personal data) that Q88 clients store or is otherwise processed on its infrastructure.