Amazon is to build its fourth data centre in Ireland, following the recent acquisition of another site in Tallaght, South Dublin.
The company has already begun its planning process for a data centre to be built on the premises, confirming its position as the biggest data centre operator in the country.
According to Independent.ie, Amazon has also applied for planning permission to demolish the existing buildings there.
In 2016, Amazon was granted planning permission for a 22,000 sq meters data centre, also in Tallaght. 50 full-time staff are expected to be employed at the site.
The company not only uses its data centres for its own operations, but also for the business of its web services (Amazon Web Services), where it provides data hosting for companies such as Airbnb, Unilever and others.
Its web services business is thought to have contributed around €11.19bn in revenue to the group during 2016, according to Independent.ie.
Amazon Web Services has been expanding its data centre portfolio throughout 2016 and looks to be continuing to do so in early 2017.
Despite the decision of Brexit in 2016, Stephen Orban, Head of enterprise strategy at AWS confirmed at a customer conference in Frankfurt, that the company has seen a demand for cloud services within Europe, which played a role in the company’s decision to go ahead with building a data centre region in London, which it opened in December.
The London data centre is AWS’ third European hub following Dublin and Frankfurt. The company also has 16 edge facilities across the EU, including three in London.
Amazon’s new acquisition will make it its fourth data centre in Tallaght alone, where the company has invested a total of over €1 billion towards its Irish assets.
The size of the new site is yet to be disclosed, but construction is expected to begin soon.
