Microsoft Invests $130M in Dublin Data Center for European Cloud
Citing a huge uptake in in demand for its range of consumer and enterprise cloud solutions, Microsoft is sinking the equivalent of $130 million USD to upgrade its so-called mega data centre in Dublin, Ireland.
“We are seeing increasing numbers of European businesses and consumers adopting Microsoft’s cloud services, and we are continuing to build new infrastructure and services in order to meet current and future demands,” Microsoft EMEA Chief Technology Officer Stephen McGibbon said in a prepared statement.
The money that Microsoft is spending on the center will go into the construction of a 112,000 square foot facility, and is expected to add 400 construction jobs over 12 months. Once it’s all built, Microsoft will add between 50 and 70 new staff to manage the expanded centre (I do enjoy typing “centre,” indulge an American). All in all, the Dublin data facility will be 415,000 square feet, while also running 50 percent more efficiently that standard approaches, Microsoft boasts in the press release.
Services hosted from the Dublin centre include Office 365, Windows Live, Xbox Live, Bing and the Windows Azure platform – more or less the entirety of Microsoft’s cloud play. Even for Microsoft, $130 million is some serious scratch – it goes to show that Redmond is serious when it says that it takes the cloud seriously at home and abroad, even as it ramps up its efforts to bring SaaS to the masses.