Sungard follows Apple, Facebook and Microsoft's lead with Irish datacentre plans

Managed hosting firm Sungard Availability Services has followed Apple, Facebook and Microsoft’s lead by outlining plans to open an Irish datacentre, creating 50 jobs in the process.

The company offers a mix of datacentre services already, including managed hosting and colocation, and already counts digital camera manufacturer Fujifilm among its Irish roll call of customers.

However, the creation of the Dublin-based facility, which is being overseen by datacentre provider Digital Realty, is geared towards helping the firm grow its existing customer base in the region and allowing it to bring new services to market.

“This expansion will not only help us evolve our current services for those rapidly growing organisations, but also enables us to attract more business from across the world and – in return – jobs to the area,” said Gary Watson, general manager of Sungard in Ireland.

On the jobs front, the company said it will need to recruit a mix of technical operations, customer services and sales and marketing staff to support the work of the site.

The tier 3 facility will be built by Digital Realty and feature high-speed network connections to the US, UK and Europe. The company will also have the option to expand the site in line with customer demand for its services. 

Bernard Geoghegan, managing director for Europe, Middle-East and Africa at Digital Realty, said Ireland is proving a popular destination for tech giants looking to build out their datacentre footprints for a number of reasons.

Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple have all committed to building datacentres in Ireland, lured by its proximity to mainland Europe and the growing European demand for locally-hosted cloud services.

“Ireland’s infrastructure supports the high speed, low latency networks vital to a variety of businesses, ranging from cloud providers through to large financial organisations and social media giants. We believe this latest partnership will attract even more investment into Ireland, as well as giving organisations access to world-class production and recovery systems,” Geoghegan added.