The Dutch Datacenter Association, an industry group covering the datacentre industry, has voiced its opposition to the Privacy Shield – the proposed replacement for the EU’s ‘safe harbour’ agreement with the US.

Last October the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the transfer of personal data from Europe to the United States made under the US Safe Harbor scheme were invalid as those transfers did not ensure an adequate level of protection under European data protection law. The proposed new EU-US Privacy Shield is a new agreement reached between the EU and US and we are currently in a transition period prior to its the implementation.

The Dutch lobby group – comprising some of the biggest names in the industry – said it backs the position of the Article 29 Working Party, a regulatory group that consists of data protection officials from all EU member states. The Working Party earlier criticised the Privacy Shield proposal, saying it does not adequately secure the privacy of European data and may expose EU residents to mass surveillance by US intelligence services.

“The Netherlands thrives on international trade and logistics. With its many data centres, the nation is an important landing and distribution point for the data of numerous US firms,” said Stijn Grove, managing director of the Dutch Datacenter Association. “Confidence, through sound agreements and frameworks on how we deal with data and specific personal information, forms the basis for trade and transit. Agreements on personal data are absolutely essential for this.” The DDA said it expects that the agreement can be amended in order to provide a better replacement for safe harbour.

A blog post from Takeshi Numoto CVP, Cloud + Enterprise at Microsoft has revealed that the  U.S. tech giant plans to open two datacentre’s in South Korea, in line with its efforts to expand cloud computing services in the region.

Numoto  wrote “As one of the largest cloud operators in the world, Microsoft has invested more than US$15 billion in building a resilient cloud infrastructure and cloud services that are highly available and secure while lowering overall costs. With the introduction of new regions in Korea, Microsoft has now announced 32 Azure regions around the world with 24 generally available today – more than any other major cloud provider.

This latest investment is further proof of Microsoft’s commitment to empower customers to embrace a cloud-first world on their terms and is expected to accelerate public and hybrid cloud adoption within Korea. Businesses in Korea and throughout Asia Pacific will be able use the massive computing power available locally to fuel growth, spur innovation and accelerate digital transformation”.

Microsoft said it will open datacentre’s in Seoul and Busan, respectively, in the first half of 2017.

The post also revealed that Microsoft Azure is generally available from local datacentre regions located in Toronto and Quebec Citym Canada.

The US software giant Microsoft has been granted permission to construct four datacentres in Dublin that could see the company invest some €900 million.

Approval for the scheme which will be built at Grange Castle in Clondalkin has been granted by the local council, a site where the company already has a datacentre presence, the Irish Intendent reported.

Microsoft has already built four datacentre facilities at Grange Castle, the first of which was constructed in 2008

“These datacentre facilities were originally designed to meet Microsoft Ireland’s datacentre server requirements based on projections completed in 2007,” the company told the council in its latest planning application. “Since that time, the demand for online services has expanded exponentially and additional datacentre development is required to allow Microsoft Ireland to meet an ever-growing worldwide demand for the services it offers over the internet,” it added.

The company received planning permission in 2013 and 2015 for two more phases of its datacentre expansion. The first phase of that expansion has been completed and the second phase is just about to get under way. Microsoft said that the “increasing move” of social and business life to the cloud means that current facilities are approaching their capacity “ahead of the most conservative predictions of five years ago”.

The current application that has just been approved by the council is phase three of Microsoft’s datacentre development at Grange Castle.

The Global datacentre provider has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a portfolio of eight carrier-neutral datacentres in Europe, five in London, two in Amsterdam and one in Frankfurt, from Equinix.  The total purchase price is approximately US$874 million.

Equinix’s divesture of the eight assets is a condition of the European Commission’s approval of Equinix’s acquisition of Telecity, which closed in January 2016.  As a condition of obtaining clearance from the European Commission, Equinix selected and agreed to divest the following facilities: TelecityGroup’s Bonnington House, Sovereign House, Meridian Gate and Oliver’s Yard datacentres and Equinix’s West Drayton datacentre in London; TelecityGroup’s Science Park and Amstel Business Park I in Amsterdam; and TelecityGroup’s Lyonerstrasse datacentre in Frankfurt.

Digital Realty will acquire a fee interest in one datacentre in Amsterdam and will acquire leasehold interests in the other seven datacentres, with a weighted-average remaining lease term of approximately 23 years, including the exercise of contractual extension options.  In addition, several of the leased facilities are entitled to statutory rights that give the tenant the ability to renew upon lease expiration, subject to certain exceptions.

In connection with this transaction, Digital Realty has granted Equinix an option to acquire the company’s facility at 114 rue Ambroise Croizat in Paris and its associated business, for a purchase price of approximately US$215 million. The option remains subject to certain conditions, including confirmatory due diligence, any mandatory governmental or local authority approval, and any required employee consultation processes.  Digital Realty cannot assure when, or if, the option will be exercised.

“The acquisition of this portfolio of eight highly attractive facilities will enhance Digital Realty’s strong global presence and offer us even greater scale on the increasingly important European datacentre landscape,” said A. William Stein, Digital Realty’s Chief Executive Officer.  “We have made several recent strategic investments in Europe, and this new portfolio – which is concentrated in three of the most strategically important datacentre and interconnection hubs in Europe – will immediately bring on board a large, diversified customer base and will also provide significant opportunities to grow and extend our footprint across the continent for years to come.”

The portfolio of eight facilities contains approximately 213,000 net sellable sq ft and 24.4 megawatts of IT load, serving a large base of over 650 blue-chip clients.  These clients are predominantly concentrated in the network, cloud and IT services, content and digital media and financial services verticals, and are expected to be highly complementary to Digital Realty’s target customer verticals.  The properties are 72% utilized, based on available power.

The portfolio also provides substantial available capacity, with approximately 6.9 megawatts of fully-installed power and 62,700 net sellable sq ft immediately available for lease, as of March 31, 2016.  Entitled expansions in the London and Amsterdam facilities could add up to another 14.9 megawatts of power capacity and 88,900 net sellable sq ft to support future growth.

The European portfolio acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2016 and is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by the European Commission, as well as completion of the works council consultation process in the Netherlands.

The Singapore based Keppel Data Centres (owners of Citadel100) has secured some S$84.5 million in contracts to provide colocation and datacentre services at its Singapore Datahub 2 facility.

The contracts were signed with an un-named blue-chip client in the Internet enterprise industry and a government-related entity.

Wong Wai Meng, CEO of Keppel Data Centres, told the Business Times that “This brings commitment at Keppel Datahub 2 to 100% within two years since the facility was completed in 2014, attesting to Keppel Data Centres’ design and operational expertise in meeting the mission-critical needs of its clients,” he noted.

Keppel Datahub 2 is a Tier III, carrier-neutral facility with more than 45,000 sq ft of datacentre and business continuity and disaster recovery space. Built to energy-efficient specifications, the facility was the first new build data centre in Singapore to be awarded the BCA-IDA Green Mark Platinum Award for New Data Centres by the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

The US headquartered file hosting service, Dropbox has said that it hopes that a decision to build and run its own datacentres will entice even more business customers to use its services for storage and collaboration, and help the firm keep pace with user demand, V3 have reported.

Dropbox was revealed to be withdrawing from and into its own datacentres, explaining that the scale of its platform makes it economically viable and beneficial to use its size to differentiate from rivals.

Mark Crosbie, EMEA trust and security manager at Dropbox told V3 “What it allows us to do is build features for products and the experience will be faster and more readily available, so we can build more complex tools and present them to people,” he said.

Crosbie added that Dropbox will also have more control over keeping the service responsive to user interactions. “As there is more and more demand on networks and more and more businesses use Dropbox, network traffic increases so there will be a better experience in terms of speed and the sync if the data centre is a couple of milliseconds away,” he said.

the social networking site for business, has opened a new S$80 million datacentre in Singapore, the company’s first outside the US.

The new datacentre, spanning 23,500 sq ft in Jurong, is one of six datacentres for LinkedIn globally. LinkedIn has invested SGD $80 million so far in the new datacentre, which was established to enhance the experience for the fast-growing base of LinkedIn members and clients across the Asia Pacific region, including speed and reliability of access to LinkedIn’s services as they connect to professional opportunities on the network.

Since January 2013, the number of LinkedIn members in the Asia Pacific more than doubled to reach over 85 million members at the end of 2015. This includes 16+ million members in Southeast Asia (of which 1+ million are in Singapore), 34+ million in India and 7+ million in Australia.

The new datacentre in Singapore processes all of LinkedIn’s online traffic in the Asia Pacific region and will also handle about a third of global traffic. It will also complement the continuing growth in LinkedIn’s storage and processing needs globally – in 2015, this growth was 34%.

Social media giant, Facebook has broken ground on its new €200 million datacentre located at Clonee in the Irish county of Meath.

In January, Tom Furlong, VP, Infrastructure announced in a blog post that “Clonee datacentre will be our first in Ireland and follows Luleå, in Sweden, as our second in Europe”

The centre is to be built in two phases over the next decade on a site of 220 acres. The build is expected to involve some around 600 construction jobs leading to 100 full-time staff by the end of next year.

In addition Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners announced a long-term renewable energy supply agreement with the Social media giant which will see. Brookfield Renewable will supply 100% renewable wind energy to the new Clonee facility and to Facebook’s international headquarters in Dublin.

Brookfield’s Irish operations comprise over 465 MW of operating wind assets in Ireland. The supply contract, which will be for a period of at least 10 years, will see Brookfield Renewable supply electricity approximately equal to the long-term average annual generation of approximately 150 MW of wind capacity. Brookfield has an additional greenfield wind development portfolio of over 200 MW across Ireland with 75 staff based in Cork.

Ralf Rank, Managing Partner at Brookfield commented, “With over 10,000 megawatts of operating hydro and wind capacity and a 7,000 megawatt renewable development pipeline globally, we are uniquely positioned to offer consumers long-term, carbon-free renewable power and price stability as we work toward combatting climate change. We are pleased to have Facebook as our first retail customer in Ireland and welcome the opportunity to work with a corporate leader focused on increasing the use of renewable power.

The Chief Executive of the Irish data centre operator, Dataplex has told the Irish Independent that the company is looking for to secure some €100 million help fund a second datacentre in Dublin.

“Dataplex is continuing expansion in the Irish market, we’re currently in the process of raising €100m for some additional data centre space, which we’ll be bringing to market,” the Sunday Independent was told.

“There will be a second facility that we’re currently working on in terms of acquiring that space. It will be a second facility for Dataplex in Dublin,”. “All of the funding for the company has been provided for by the existing shareholders, the company doesn’t have any debt on its books”.

Dataplex opened a €23 million datacentre in west Dublin in 2013.

NTT DATA and Dell have announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for NTT DATA to acquire Dell Services, the global IT services provider. The agreement reflects NTT DATA’s continued focus on expanding its brand and leadership position globally. Although no information on the value of the transaction was provided by the companies, market analysts say that NTT will be paying over US$3 billion.

“NTT DATA is pleased with the unique opportunity to acquire such high-calibre talent, and a corporate culture that shares common values with NTT DATA, with emphasis on ‘Clients First,’ ‘Foresight,’ ‘Teamwork,’ and a commitment to innovation,” stated Toshio Iwamoto, President and CEO of NTT DATA Corporation.

“Welcoming Dell Services to NTT DATA is expected to strengthen our leadership position in the IT Services market and initiates an important business relationship with Dell.”

Through this transaction NTT DATA and Dell Services clients will have access to the expanded capabilities and industry offerings of the combined organization, delivering upon a consistent theme that is inherent to the NTT DATA brand: placing clients’ needs first, fostering innovation, and driving accelerated results through its global reach and cost-efficient solutions.

When the transaction is completed, clients and employees of Dell Services and NTT DATA will also benefit from:

A significant expansion of BPO capabilities, particularly in healthcare and insurance industries.

Increased infrastructure platform, with the Dell Services datacentres in the US, UK, and Australia joining NTT’s 230 datacenters around the globe.

Expanded technology resources to provide next-generation application and business process services to help clients leverage IT to drive business performance and outcomes.

John McCain, CEO of NTT DATA, Inc., led this transaction and will have overall responsibility for leading the combined business.

“There are few acquisition targets in our market that provide this type of unique opportunity to increase our competitiveness and the depth of our market offerings,” said Mr. McCain. “Dell Services is a very well-run business and we believe its employee base, long-standing client relationships, and the mix of long term and project-based work will enhance our portfolio. We are confident this transaction will be positive for clients, employees, and shareholders, and will advance our collective vision to be an innovative partner for our clients.”

Dell Services will continue to operate under the leadership of Suresh Vaswani, president of Dell Services, reporting to Michael Dell, until the transaction closes.