Microsoft announces €170m expansion of Dublin data centre

Microsoft is to invest €170 million to expand its Europe, Middle East and Africa data centre in Dublin, it has been announced.

A total of 380 construction jobs will be created during the build, which has already commenced at the company’s facility in Clondalkin.

An additional 20 people will join the existing team of 80 employees when the data centre is completed next year.

This second expansion of the Dublin data centre will increase the floor area by 15,700 square metres to 54,255 square metres, bringing the company’s total investment in the facility to €594 million.

“This continued programme of investment is driven by the growth in demand from consumers and businesses for Microsoft’s cloud services,” the company said in a statement.

Welcoming today's announcement, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said Ireland had a strategy to "become the cloud centre of excellence and country of choice for data centre investments".

"Microsoft contributed greatly to this strategy when it chose Ireland as the home for its first mega data centre outside of the United States, " he said.

“We realised that the factors that influenced that decision were key differentiators that could also attract further investors.”

Microsoft Ireland managing director Cathriona Hallahan said the expansion is "evidence of the continued demand for Microsoft's cloud services such as Office 365, Bing, Skype, Xbox Live, and the Windows Azure platform across Europe, the Middle East and Africa".

“It also highlights our continued commitment to investment and innovation in Ireland and Europe,” she added.

Chief executive of the IDA Barry O’Leary said the investment “reinforces Ireland’s credentials as the leading location in cloud computing”.

The data centre makes use of Ireland’s low air temperatures to cool the facility, which results in greater power efficiency and an annual Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) average of 1.25 during peak usage hours.

The data center is also 50 per cent more efficient than traditionally built facilities and uses just 1 per cent of the water used by other similarly sized data centres in the industry, the company claims.

Approximately 99 per cent of all waste produced at the facility is recycled, including packaging, pallets, crates and cabling.