Amazon’s Irish Expansion: Retail And Cloud Giant Plans Further £700m Data Centre
Dublin Airport facility will one of one Amazon’s biggest in Europe as tech giants ramp up European data centre efforts
Amazon is planning to build another data centre near Dublin airport that could take the firm’s spending on data centres in the country to more than £700 million.
The data centre would be in addition to plans revealed last month for another, smaller build in Dublin that will set Amazon back £145 million.
The planned data centre, reported by the Irish Independent, would be the biggest and one of most expensive data centres Amazon has built in Ireland to date, highlighting the business, economic, and legal benefits of operating with customer data in Ireland.
Amazon uses its data centres to process massive volumes of sales from Amazon.com, as well as orchestrating its AWS cloud service from the facilities.
Safe Harbour
A recent ruling by the European Union Court of Justice surrounding the Safe Harbour agreement means that US companies may soon legally have to keep European customer data within Europe.
Whilst not necessarily linked to the ruling, the frenzy of data centre activity seen by US web and tech giants in Europe over the past few months will go some way to alleviate problems caused by having to keep data within EU borders.
Companies continuing to transfer EU individuals’ personal data to the US under Safe Harbour rules will face legal action beginning at the end of January 2016.
This is unless a new agreement is reached between the EU and the US by that time, European data protection regulators have said.
The regulators are currently meeting in Brussels to discuss the implications of the decision by the European Union Court of Justice to strike down Safe Harbour, which was used by around 4,000 companies to facilitate data transfers between the two territories.
Clonshaugh
According to the Irish newspaper, the data centre will be constructed in Dublin’s Clonshaugh Business and Technology Park, just half a mile south east of Dublin Airport.
Apple also has plans in the pipeline for a £600 million data centre in County Galway, Ireland. TechWeekEurope has contacted Amazon for comment.
