Salesforce To Open Its First UK Data Centre In August

Cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) specialist Salesforce.com is planning to reinforce its position in Europe by launching new data centres in Germany, France and the UK.

The company’s first British server farm will be located in Slough and is expected to open in August, followed by two facilities on mainland Europe in 2015. This announcement comes several days after Salesforce posted its 2014 financial results, reporting 33 percent year-on-year revenue growth fuelled by strong sales in the region.

“The UK has a growing reputation as the leader in the European digital economy and we welcome this new investment,” said Stephen Kelly, COO for the government. “Within the UK government we are driving a policy of ‘Cloud First’ to improve the way the public sector manages crucial functions, engages with citizens and delivers value for taxpayers.”

Locally sourced

Salesforce reported that its European revenue in the 2014 fiscal year grew 41 percent year-on-year, well ahead of the results in other parts of the world. To take better advantage of the local market, the company plans to expand its presence and create more than 500 new jobs across Europe during the next fiscal year. Local data centre space has become more important since leaks by Edward Snowden indicated that US cloud providers are helping the NSA to spy on their customers, through access to their data centres.

Salesforce recently signed up a number of high-profile European customers including BMW Group, German optics manufacturer Zeiss and the UK Financial Conduct Authority. “Salesforce1 is a key platform for us, and will be instrumental in helping us meet our strategic objective to ensure that the relevant markets function well,” commented Gareth Lewis, CIO of the FCA.

In November 2013, Salesforce executive Alex Dayon criticised Microsoft, telling the audience at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco that “they don’t get social and I don’t think they really get mobile.”

Later, Dayon told TechWeek that the company was planning to introduce better encryption in the wake of the NSA scandal, despite the fact that Salesforce data wasn’t the kind of information the government agencies were usually after.

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