‘Lobbying’ global chiefs key to €170m Microsoft development, says MD

Securing the €170 million, 169,000sq ft expansion of Microsoft's "mega data centre" facility in Sandyford was the result of "lobbying" with the company's "key influencers in the US", Cathriona Hallahan, the company's Ireland managing director said yesterday.

The project is due to be completed next spring and will create 20 roles within the data centre facility. It currently houses 80 of Microsoft’s nearly 2,000 Irish employees.

Ms Hallahan said she had reassured Microsoft global bosses on "why Ireland is a good place to invest". The "ambient air temperatures" available to help ensure the facility is "the most eco-friendly data centre" that the company has globally was one of the main deciding factors in the investment, she said.

Speaking at the announcement, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Eamon Gilmore said the move was "a vindication of the work that Ireland has done to attract high-tech companies to Ireland particularly now in the area of R&D".

Having seen plans for the data centre, Mr Gilmore joked that the inclusion of “what is essentially a roofless building where our air will be used to cool the facility” will mean “this is a cloud facility in more ways than one”.

Ms Hallahan said the expanded data centre – originally built in 2009 – will help meet “growing consumer and business demand across Europe, Middle East and Africa” in cloud-based Microsoft products, such as Windows Azure, Office 365 and Skype.

It is, she added, another part of Microsoft’s “transformation from being a product company to being a devices and services company”, and will be key for helping businesses deal with the “consumerisation of IT” as more employees demand IT solutions on a number of devices aside from the workplace PC.

While the Tánaiste lauded the fact the International Institute for Management Development World Competitiveness Yearbook for 2013 ranked Ireland "third in the world for availability of skilled labour and first for flexibility and adaptability of our workforce", Ms Hallahan warned that there was still a skills gap in relation to cloud computing roles.

“If you look [back] 12 months, we had about 2,500 jobs within our partner eco-system that they were trying to hire for,” she said.

This is despite Microsoft working with a number of third-level institutions “to develop the curriculum to be able to [fill] specific roles” in the overall cloud computing arena.