MICROSOFT HAS confirmed plans to expand its “mega data centre” in Dublin, investing an additional $130 million (€98 million) in the facility.
The Dublin-based data centre, which began operation in 2009 with an initial investment of $500 million, will grow to 415,000 sq ft and 29.4 megawatts of power, with the extension opening by year end.
The centre provides services to customers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It was the first Microsoft mega data centre built outside the US, and was designed to support the company’s cloud services.
“This investment shows where we are placing our bets for the future.
“As customers embrace Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365, Windows Live, Xbox Live, Bing and the Windows Azure platform, we are investing in regional cloud infrastructure to meet their needs,” said Microsoft’s chief financial officer Peter Klein, on a visit to Dublin.
Ireland was a “natural choice” for expansion to support demand for cloud services, said Christian Belady, general manager for data centre services with Microsoft, given the company already has a presence here and had physical space for an expansion.
Due to the mild climate, the Dublin data centres are cooled using ambient air, rather than water, which is line with Microsoft’s policy to build sustainable data centres, said Mr Belady.
It uses 1 per cent of the water of a traditional data centre and 99 per cent of all waste is recycled. The Dublin extension will be one of the first of Microsoft’s “Generation 4” data centres, which Mr Belady said were cheaper to construct because they use fewer materials in the construction phase and need less energy to run.
Mr Belady says Microsoft considers 35 different criteria when choosing where to locate such an investment, including factors such as energy costs, the regulatory environment, corporation tax rate, workforce and availability of bandwidth.
Paul Rellis, managing director of Microsoft Ireland, said he was “delighted” with the level of the investment.
“We have evolved from shipping software in a box to customers to delivering cloud services and this data centre is the engine that allows us to do that,” said Mr Rellis.
This is just the latest data centre investment from a multinational in the Dublin area. Last year Google announced it was constructing a €75 million data centre in west Dublin while Digital Realty Trust was granted planning permission for a centre in the same business park.
Although the data centre won’t directly create a large number of jobs – the expanded centre will employ between 50 and 70 people – it is expected to create 400 construction jobs over the next 12 months.
