Blacknight Expands Infrastructure in Dublin with BT Ireland Partnership
Irish host and registrar Blacknight has reached a deal to run services out of a BT Ireland data center in Dublin’s Citywest to support its growth in European markets, according to a report from the Irish Independent. The €4 million lease agreement reportedly spans multiple years, and involves a large amount of Blacknight’s data infrastructure.
Blacknight has been operating from four data centers, all in Ireland, including its own, which it opened in Carlow in early 2014. BT Ireland’s Citywest data center is a 183,000 square foot, carrier-neutral facility.
“This is a significant investment for Blacknight,” said Michele Neylon, chief executive of Blacknight. “It will enable us to completely refresh and enhance our data infrastructure and expand our network capacity.”
Blacknight has been broadening its portfolio from a focus on shared hosting and the Irish developers market to also serve the SME market across Europe as a one-stop shop for web services, with new offerings like DIY marketing tools from rankingCoach, which it launched last year.
How easy or profitable it will be for the company to address the European market going forward was made less certain by the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, also known as Brexit, on June 23.
Companies in the UK trying to keep up with changes to their legal obligations, for instance from newly minted EU laws governing data protection and other matters, will have to be confident in their local markets to make new investments while the details of Brexit are worked out.
Google opened its second data center in Dublin just ahead of the referendum.
Source: TheWHIR