Up to 400 building jobs are being created through a major new investment in cloud computing by Microsoft.
The company's building a new data centre in south county Dublin as part of a project worth €170 million. It brings the total level of investment at the company’s Dublin facility to €594 million
Cathriona Hallahan of Microsoft Ireland says the investment proves how important Ireland is to the company.
And she says the new facility will help them run services that will meet the needs of Irish people, improving security and efficiency:
The centre will be used to support the company's services on the likes of Windows Messenger and Xbox Live.
The announcement was made by the Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore at the computer giant's European Development Centre in Dublin later this morning. He said, "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 datacentre investments. Microsoft contributed greatly to this strategy when it chose Ireland as the home for its first mega datacentre outside of the United States. We realised that the factors that influenced that decision were key differentiators that could also attract further investors.
"We are delighted that Microsoft continues to choose Ireland as a location and welcome the decision to further expand its footprint in Dublin. I'd like to congratulate Microsoft on today’s announcement and thank Cathriona Hallahan and her team for its continued support in positioning Ireland as a location of choice for Cloud Services and the associated infrastructure."
Climate controlled
Microsoft says our low air temperature is an important factor in any decision to work here - it is responsible for efficiently cooling its facilities with 'air side economisation', resulting in greater power efficiency and an annual Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) average of 1.25during peak usage hours.
Microsoft currently employs around 2,000 people in Dublin.
Construction has already started and the expanded data centre is due for completion next Spring.
