Fibre has turned Cork and Mayo into two of the best spots in Ireland for data centres

BOTH CORK AND Mayo have been transformed into top locations for big companies to set up data centres, according to the local head of one of the Europe’s leading data centre companies.

However Tanya Duncan, the managing director of Interxion Ireland, added that the Republic needs to continue to invest in infrastructure to help incentivise multinationals to set up the facilities here.

Interxion is one of Europe’s leading data centre service providers. It has about 40 data centres spread across the entire continent, providing services to about 1,500 customers.

The company already has two data centres in Ireland and is planning to open a third, to be located in Dublin, before the end of the year.

Speaking to Fora at the Data Centres conference in the RDS during the week, Duncan said that “locations that were not possible to locate in are now possible”.

“The landing positions of the latest two sea cables is not insignificant,” she said. “Neither are in Dublin, and it is great for companies to have a diversity of choice.

Interxion Ireland managing director Tanya Duncan

Fibre cables

Duncan was referring to two fibre optic sea cables, which were landed at Cork and Mayo in 2015.

The Hibernia Express link in Garretstown in County Cork was the first modern fibre optic cable connecting North America to Europe in more than 12 years, while a separate fibre cable was landed at Killala, near Ballina in Mayo, connecting New York, Dublin and London.

The cables are being used to provide quicker and more secure data connections between Ireland and the countries that they are connected to, such as the US.

“For many years we had a drought in investment in sea cables in Ireland. Now we have two in Cork and the west, we need to keep investing in that kind of infrastructure,” Duncan said.

“Those two locations, from our scale, could take our power needs. The connectivity is now there, which is significant. I do definitely think that we will have to continue to attract more fibre cable people to Ireland.”

A room of data servers

She added that Ireland has been successful at persuading companies to set up data centres here so far, resulting in “is a lot of data that has to travel between Ireland, the US and Europe”.

“Capacity and resilience are why we need to keep attracting investment (in fibre cables),” she said.

Track record

When asked if the recent row over Apple’s planned data centre in Athenry, which has been held up by a planning dispute involving a small group of residents, might give any companies considering building an Irish data centre pause for thought, Duncan declined to comment on the case.

However, she added that Ireland “already has a significant track record of deploying data centres”.

“Our reputation for deploying data centres of scale is proven,” she said. “(Planning) is not my area of expertise, but that planning that we went through was very well thought out. We found it was a relatively simple process.

“If you do your due diligence and preparation, generally planning will run relatively smoothly (although) we are not on the same scale as some of the other providers, so where we locate generally won’t be in places that will cause controversy.”