Microsoft invests €170m in Dublin data centre expansion

Expansion to be completed by spring 2014, with 20 data centre roles created as a result

Microsoft is to invest €170m (£141m) to expand its Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) data centre in Dublin, Ireland.

The expansion is scheduled to be completed by spring 2014, and will create 380 construction jobs and 20 new data centre roles at the facility, which currently employs 80 people.

The data centre was officially opened in 2009, and was first expanded in February 2012.

Microsoft said that the expansion will bring the total level of investment into the Dublin facility to €594m (£492m), and will increase the computing capacity by 15,700 square metres or 169,000 square feet, bringing the total footprint up to 54,244 square metres or 584,000 square feet.

It added that the datacentre has an annual power usage effectiveness (PUE) average of 1.25 during peak usage hours and claimed that it is 50 per cent more efficient than traditionally built facilities, using only one per cent of the water used by similarly sized data centres in the industry today.

The technology giant said the investment is in response to an increase in demand from consumers and businesses for its cloud services.

Ireland's minister for foreign affairs and trade, Eamon Gilmore, welcomed the investment.

"We welcome this further commitment from Microsoft, one of the earliest multinational investors in Ireland. As a country, we have a strategy to become the ‘cloud centre of excellence' and the 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. We realised that the factors that influenced that decision were key differentiators that could also attract further investors," he said.

Several technology firms including Amazon and Google have also built data centres in Dublin.