IBM HAS unveiled a new data centre at its technology campus in Damastown, Co Dublin.

The announcement from IBM and the IDA involves a €30 million investment in the facility which will be fully owned and run by IBM Ireland.

The data centre, located in the former microelectronics manufacturing facility, will provide 34 new jobs in supply chain and fulfilment roles and will make available what IBM describes as a "wide range of new and cost-effective IT services for the Irish marketplace". In addition, it will act as a global hub for delivering IBM software to its customer base in 84 countries throughout the world.

IBM's country general manager Michael Daly said the unveiling of the data centre was important because it related to some of the key issues facing business today such as "how to run IT infrastructure that is flexible and responsive in an uncertain economic environment, secured from threats and data loss and taking into account costs and energy efficiency".

One of the key elements in the data centre design was the use of what IBM termed "green strategies". According to the technology giant this involved the optimisation of space, power, cooling and resilience while reducing costs.

IBM's country manager for integrated technology services in Ireland Anne Fitzsimons said one of the practical ideas being used by the centre is thermal assessment.

This evaluates and maps the whole room and gives a pictorial display of the hot points, allowing the temperature to be controlled as efficiently as possible.

IBM Business development manager Liam de Veale said the centre is run at a higher temperature than others of its kind.

"We run it at 24 degrees instead of 21 degrees so it doesn't feel as cold as you'd expect. Those three degrees, however, makes a huge difference in terms of the energy consumption needed to cool the room and the equipment will run with no problems at that temperature," he said.

IBM also believes its data centre to be the only one in the country that has independent electrical feeds to the national grid from two different power stations.