Digital connectivity has become the invisible backbone that supports the global economy. At the heart of this transformation, the giants of the cloud and AI world need to interconnect their platforms on a global scale. This relies on a robust and optimised infrastructure that passes through strategic hubs, which provide essential pivots where data flows converge and redraw the global map of the internet.
Interconnection hubs for undersea cables are nerve centres for internet traffic, with Marseille, Milan, Athens and the Iberian Peninsula playing a key role in this global architecture. These locations are landing points for transoceanic cables connecting Europe to the rest of the world. Marseille in southern France, for example, is a true Mediterranean hub that links the region to Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Land hubs complete this network by interconnecting networks via internet exchange (IX) points. Internet exchanges in Amsterdam (AMS-IX), Frankfurt (DE-CIX), London (LINX), Paris (France-IX), Milan (MIX), Iberia (ESpanix) and Greece (GR-IX) are among the largest IXs in Europe, enabling efficient distribution of traffic between cloud service providers, telecom operators and large companies. These hubs optimise latency and reduce transit costs, while guaranteeing more resilient network infrastructure.
Crossroads of connectivity
With Europe acting as a crossroads for global digital traffic, the Iberian Peninsula occupies a special place in this dynamic. Located at the intersection of the transatlantic and Euro-Mediterranean routes, it connects North America, South America and even Asia. It is also ideally situated to capitalise on the many new subsea cables being built around the world to support the demands of the AI age.
Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona are points where cables converge, connecting the two sides of the Atlantic and beyond. This unique positioning reinforces the strategic importance of the region as a centre of connectivity and technological innovation, putting it at the heart of the digital transformation that we currently see happening across the world.
Well aware of the opportunities and potential in today’s market, data centre provider Data4 has established itself in many of these strategic areas. In those locations, the company offers high-performance and sustainable infrastructure to numerous players, from hyperscalers to large companies, cloud platforms and AI players.
As a European leader in the data centre field, Data4 designs, builds and operates cutting-edge campuses, guaranteeing very high levels of performance, security and compliance with environmental requirements. It provides agile and scalable hosting options, all the way from a single rack to a dedicated building.
European infrastructure champion
On the Iberian Peninsula, Data4’s infrastructure includes a campus of seven data centres in Madrid, providing a capacity of 130MW.
Last year, the company also announced that it would invest more than €300 million in developing a new data centre campus in an industrial zone in Athens, Greece, supporting up to 90MW of power capacity. The site provides another strategic location to further Data4’s aims as a connectivity hub provider in the Mediterranean.
It also forms part of the group’s plan to invest €21.5 billion in European expansion by 2030 to put itself at the forefront of the region’s data centre market, including €15 billion in France. While maintaining high environmental standards, this plan will boost the footprint Data4 has already established in France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Germany, as well as recently in Greece.
At present, Data4 has more than 30 data centres across Europe, which are home to international cloud players, telecoms operators and innovative tech companies. This spread of data centres gives partners a healthy set of location options.
Data4’s continued growth and expansion into major interconnection hubs across the continent is testament to its commitment to supporting the global digital transformation. In a world where every millisecond counts and partners of all types demand low latency to support a multitude of services, infrastructure control is, more than ever, both a strategic and a geopolitical issue.
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