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Though not a done deal just yet, the signs are good for Grange Castle to welcome yet another major data centre.
South Dublin County Council yesterday (10 July) agreed to dispose of a site at the popular Grange Castle Business Park as another US tech giant eyes an Irish base.
CyrusOne got the go-ahead from the council for its plans to build a major facility across nearly 15 acres of land. With dozens of data centres already in the US, the UK and Singapore, the company must now seek planning permission to get the final nod.
Documents seen by Siliconrepublic.com show an extensive layout agreed by the council, with CyrusOne planning to spend €21m on the creation of the data centre.
Taking approximately five years to get up to full capacity (years one, three and five will see major equipment investment), hundreds of jobs are to be created during the building phase.
The total number of full-time staff expected to work on the finished facility will be near 70, the vast majority being vendors. However, there will be space for more than 130 employees on site when the full build is finished, with office accommodation part of the plans.
Grange Castle is already home to a swathe of major technology and science companies, with data centres, in large part, the order of the day.
Interxion, for example, recently opened its third Dublin data centre, called DUB3, which represents a capital investment of €28m. Other companies with data centres there include Google and Microsoft, while pharma giants such as Takeda have invested significant sums in the site, too.
CyrusOne is a major player in the data centre space, with its recently released Q2 results for 2017 showing 20pc annual growth.
A real-estate investment trust, the company provides mission-critical data centre facilities that protect and ensure the continued operation of IT infrastructure for more than 970 customers, including 190 of the Fortune 1,000 or equivalent-sized companies.
Data centre dealings for Ireland
Apple’s wait for data centre planning permission in Athenry, meanwhile, goes on, with a decision expected later this month. Denmark seems to have profited from the delay, with Apple already adding a second facility to its original Danish investment, which was made at the same time as its Athenry one two years ago.
Ireland is already home to at least 30 global data centres belonging to tech giants such as Facebook, Amazon, Vodafone and Equinix, to name a few.
IDA Ireland has appointed Jacobs Engineering Ireland to identify further strategic sites for the construction of large-scale data centres in various parts of the country.
Meanwhile, an upskilling programme to meet the needs of the data centre industry has emerged from IT Sligo and Haute École Louvain en Hainaut (HELHa) in Belgium.
The creators of the course claim that the new bachelor’s degree, a BEng in data centre facilities engineering, will be first of its kind in Europe.
