Land and Expand: Compass Datacenters, QTS Data Centers, Google Cloud

Welcome to Land and Expand, a new feature at Data Center Frontier highlighting the latest data center development news, including new sites, land acquisition and campus expansions.

Compass Expands Into Europe

Compass Datacenters and real estate firm Hines have acquired land in Noviglio, Italy (Milan market) where they plan to build a 2.3 million square foot data center campus to support 48MW+ of IT load, with construction to begin in 2023. The joint venture marks the entry of Compass into the European market.

“Building our first European campus in Milan is a major step in Compass’ global expansion strategy,” said AJ Byers, President and Chief Development Officer at Compass Datacenters. “It’s geographic location, undersea cable connectivity, robust fiber availability and affordable power makes it an ideal location for hyperscalers. Hines’ vision for Italy align with our own, and our combined resources should accelerate the timeline for customer availability.”

Mario Abbadessa, senior managing director and country head, Italy, at Hines, said the project “represents significant opportunities in a high-growth sector. The Italian data center market is becoming a leading destination for cloud providers with growing capacity requirements commonly referred to as hyperscalers, with $2.6 billion projected to be invested by 2026. Milan’s high level of network connectivity and the region’s multiple submarine cable termination points were key elements in both companies’ mutual identification of the Novigilio site as an ideal data center campus location in Milan’s supply-constrained market.”

QTS Expands in Georgia, Richmond

QTS Data Centers has purchased 600 acres in Fayetteville, Georgia for a data center campus, the Fayette County Development Authority confirmed this week. Local officials say the project could exceed $1 billion capital expenditure, and grow to include 1.5 million square feet of space and 250 MWs of power.

The news follows confirmation from QTS that the company recently acquired 200 acres at its Richmond Data Center campus in Henrico County, Virginia for expansion that could encompass up to 240 megawatts across 1.5 million square feet of additional capacity.

“Henrico and the White Oak Technology Park have been great to QTS and we will continue to seek new opportunities for investment as evidenced by the recent addition of 200+ acres to the Richmond campus,” said, Clint Heiden, co-founder of the QTS Richmond NAP and Chief Revenue Officer of QTS Data Centers. “We recognize that the digital business world is thriving, the data center industry is growing at exponential pace to accommodate that change, and we have all the tools to usher in a new era of global communications. We look forward to leading the charge together as we have found a great home to build the foundation of Internet infrastructure at the Richmond NAP in Henrico, Virginia.”

Google Adds Cloud Regions in APAC Region

Google announced plans to bring three new Google Cloud regions to Malaysia, Thailand, and New Zealand. The news follows the recent announcement of six other new regions coming to Berlin, Dammam, Doha, Mexico, Tel Aviv, and Turin.

“These new cloud regions represent our ongoing commitment to supporting digital transformation across Asia Pacific, said Karan Bajwa, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Google Cloud. “We continue to invest in expanding connectivity throughout the region by working with partners in the telecommunications industry to establish subsea cables — including Apricot, Echo, JGA South, INDIGO, and Topaz — and points of presence in major cities.”

“The new Google Cloud regions will help to address organizations’ increasing needs in the area of digital sovereignty and enable more opportunities for digital transformation and innovation in Asia Pacific,” said Daphne Chung, Research Director, Cloud Services and Software Research, IDC Asia/Pacific. “With this announcement, Google Cloud is providing customers with more choices in accessing capabilities from local cloud regions while aiding their journeys to hybrid and multi-cloud environments.”

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