Italian ICT hub IRIDEOS has begun construction of a new data centre in Milan as local enterprises, operators and public administration bodies continue to drive colocation demand up as well as digital infrastructure investments.

The Avalon 3 Data Center, an extension of the Avalon Campus, the largest Italian interconnection hub, comes less than a year after the inauguration of the Avalon 2 Data Center, a 13,000 square meters (140,000 square feet) facility.

The new facility covers a total area of over 3,500 square meters (37,700 square feet), and is set to be brought online by July 2022.

With a capacity of 500 racks and 3.2 MW of power, Avalon 3 will host customer architectures or entire data centres, the company said.

The operator added Avalon 3 will be powered by 100% renewable energy and has been designed in an eco-sustainable way to make use of water resources for cooling.

It continued to explain that this will help maintain the energy efficiency of the data centre at a PUE target of 1.3, fully compliant with the European Pact for “Climate Neutral Data Centers” joined by IRIDEOS.

Danilo Vivarelli, CEO of IRIDEOS, said: “Data centres and cloud infrastructures, which are the pillars of the European Digital Decade and at the heart of the Italian PNRR (Recovery and Resilience Plan) strategies, are crucial for the development of the digital economy.

“We have decided to invest once again in the enlargement of our Avalon Campus by building a new sustainable and cutting-edge data centre. Avalon 3, together with Avalon 2 and the rooms of the Avalon Campus in via Caldera, constitutes a single Italian hyper-connected hub, a strategic infrastructure at the service of the digitalization of companies and the Public Administration.”

Italy’s data centre market is currently witnessing investments in seven facilities expected to be operational in the next 2-4 years.

Over US$2.6 billion will be invested in the development of data centres across the country during 2021-2026, according to Arizton’s latest data.