The administrators of bankrupt 2e2 have demanded upfront cash payments from 2e2 datacentre customers to keep the facilities open and operating. Users have until 5pm today to pledge funds to the administrators, who are seeking £960,000 to continue operating.
Users of a number of the company's other services have also been told that the staff covering these areas have been made redundant and that the administrators, FTI Consulting, will no longer be funding and operating these services.
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They include 2e2's flexible resourcing, business applications, unified communications and field support operations.
"Insofar as the services referred to above are concerned, you will need to put alternative arrangements in place with immediate effect," warns the letter.
Furthermore, customers of those services that want to repatriate software and data currently in the possession of 2e2's administrators will have to wait up to four months before they can get it, according to the letter from the administrators.
It stated, "We have received a number of requests from customers seeking to gain access to their data immediately. Unfortunately, the levels of data held in the companies' datacentres are such that this process could take up to 16 weeks and we will need to ensure that the integrity of third-party data and security is maintained."
That length of time might be partly due to the level of redundancies that the administrators say they have been forced to make due to a lack of funding to maintain continuing operations.
Datacentre shock
But organisations that have operational data held by 2e2, or applications running, in one of the defunct company's two datacentres in Gateshead and Reading - whether on 2e2-owned kit or their own, hosted within the datacentres - will be in for the biggest shock.
The administrators are demanding a payment of £960,000 to keep the datacentres open just for the next week, with the 20 biggest customers being asked to pay the lion's share of the costs. Smaller users have been presented with a demand for £5,000, including VAT, as their contribution. Without payment, the administrators say they will simply shut down the datacentres from next Friday - 15 February - regardless of the knock-on effects on users.
Half the costs - £253,336 - are to meet staff salaries, with operational costs of £163,643 also including the cost of software licensing for Microsoft and Cedar HR software.
"In order to meet the ongoing costs of operating the datacentres, we will require customers to provide immediate funding to the companies. In the event that funding is not provided, we will be unable to maintain the datacentre infrastructure and we will have no alternative, other than to cease all operations without any managed wind-down of those operations," states the letter.
All customers are expected to sign up by 5pm tonight, with payment to be received before the close of business on Tuesday 12 February.
