Doug Loewe, managing director of Interxion Ireland
Ireland is attracting a disproportionately high number of cloud and big data players and judging by the pipeline the trend is set to continue, says Interxion Ireland managing director Doug Loewe.
Interxion owns and operates 64,800 sq metres of colocation space within more than 30 data centres in 11 European countries.
The company recently embarked on the expansion of its Dublin data centre to bring an additional 900 sq metres of equipped space at its DUB2 data centre, bringing the total equipped space to 1,700 sq metres.
The expansion brings to €13m the capital investment in the company’s Dublin facilities so far.
Loewe says Ireland is a natural location for cloud computing for companies seeking the perfect geographic location to serve a growing global audience.
“What we are really seeing is cloud companies that are emerging on the world stage are making changes going out to carrier neutral data centres like Interxion and making sure that if they are not putting their primary footprint there, they are at least having on ramps and off ramps to different cloud providers. That’s the biggest trend right now.
“We are constantly having to lower the utilisation of power to make it more efficient and also make sure that we are expanding the data centre to keep up with demand. But the real driver we are experiencing right now is making sure those cloud providers have a secure, awesome data centre to locate their cloud assets.”
Digital pipeline
Loewe says the pipeline of companies looking to locate in Ireland is considerable. “I was particularly pleased. I was in the US for the last two weeks and a disproportionate number of US-headquartered companies are not only looking to accelerate their presence in Europe, but they are choosing Ireland, and specifically central Dublin, to locate their people assets, as well as their computing assets.
“They are replicating data centres that they have in San Francisco or outside in Silicon Valley here in Europe and a disproportionate amount of that activity is leaning towards or landing here in Dublin. The activity is very, very strong.”
Key to Ireland remaining attractive, Loewe explained, is the quality of talent.
“I think it is quite important that there continues to be quality engineers that understand the mechanical and electrical environment. You want to make sure you continue to have a robust sales force that not only knows how to sell but really understands the cloud segment, the financial community of interest, the digital media community of interest and be able to spend time in helping customers to solve problems.”
According to Loewe, Dublin is in a good position to continue to attract the next wave of IT investors. “Dublin is uniquely positioned – it is the only native English-speaking Eurozone member. It is emerging nicely from the recession and big data, cloud and data centres are on the forefront of creating economic growth.”
He says geographically Dublin bridges the UK and the rest of mainland Europe with the US.
“The undersea cables go through diverse paths throughout Ireland on the way to the US. That means we are able to not only have a robust data centre and electricity that is high quality and available but you have incredible fibre routes that allow the digital community to be able to have the connectivity it needs,” he pointed out.
Doug Loewe will be a panelist at the Digital Ireland Forum: Global 2.0 on 20 September in Dublin, where digital leaders will discuss Ireland’s future as a hub for the best in internationally traded digital services.
