Clifford Chance to close European datacentres

Part of move to reduce infrastructure significantly by 2015

Legal giant Clifford Chance is set to collapse its datacentres in Paris and Amsterdam to create one big European centre in Germany. The transition should be complete by the middle of 2012.

This move will be the first step towards reducing the infrastructure significantly by 2015.

The German datacentre, which will be based in Frankfurt, will be one of just four hubs, with the others situated in New York, London and Hong Kong. The move follows a significant consolidation of 19 datacentres - one for each country office - to six several years ago.

Clifford Chance CIO Paul Greenwood said: "In five years' time we should not have any datacentres at all but that doesn't mean all our information will all be in the public cloud, some of it will be outsourced or hosted in a private cloud. I don't know whether we will achieve it, but it's good to have an objective."