Data centres give the country a critical advantage in the digital age - What is a Cloud Region.
Microsoft and Google are creating their own data centres in Attica, with a horizon of 2030, gradually making Greece a regional data handling and storage hub in the wider Southeast Europe region.
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The data centres give the country a critical advantage in the digital age, at a time when artificial intelligence is increasingly entering the daily lives of citizens and businesses, while it is inevitable that additional computing power and more resistant digital infrastructures will be required.
It is recalled that Google's investment was announced in September 2022, and it was reported that its implementation will take place within three years, which practically means that Google's Cloud Region, which is estimated to consist of three data centres, will be operational in 2025.
The company's planning, according to OT, is progressing normally to operate the first data centre in 2025. The exact amount of the investment remains unknown at this time.
It has not yet been clarified whether Google will build its data centres or cooperate with existing ones, with the second scenario being advanced for the company to be consistent with its announced schedule. It is estimated that the landscape will be fully clarified within the first half of the year.
Cloud Region
The creation of the first Google Cloud Region, i.e. a region providing advanced cloud computing services, in Attica, is expected to contribute to the creation of thousands of new jobs, boosting the national GDP by 2.2 billion dollars (around 2 billion euros) until 2030, with the benefits of the investment spilling over the entire economic chain.
A Cloud Region, which is based on high-tech physical infrastructures such as data centres and telecommunication networks, essentially constitutes a region providing cloud computing services (Cloud) to businesses of all sizes and the public sector.
Each region can support a multitude of services with extremely short response times, such as the storage, organisation, analysis, and rapid retrieval of data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning services.
Doing so dramatically improves the processing of complex tasks, such as the rapid settlement of financial transactions, high-definition multimedia production, high-end gaming, and digital computing.
According to data from AlphaBeta Economics, by 2030, this project is estimated to support the creation of more than 19,400 new jobs.
The first Google Cloud region in the country will help meet the growing demand for cloud services in Greece and around the world so that organisations can ensure digital products and services more reliably and at higher speeds.
The cloud offers businesses of all sizes, including public sector organisations, access to critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, big data computing tools and 5G networks at a time when all these are more important than ever.
With the help of both these technologies and the educational resources of Google Cloud, Greece will be able to create a strong ecosystem of qualified people who will be able to meet the country's growing technical needs.
Greece is dynamic in the era of data centres.
Data centres are the facilities where huge amounts of data are stored and support cloud technology, which in Greek has been translated as computing cloud. In simple words, this technology serves citizens and businesses that, instead of storing their data on their computer or a server, will use the cloud application, which is supported and works thanks to data centres.
Recently, Microsoft's investment plan, approaching 1 billion euros, for the creation of data centres in Attica, Spata and Koropi got the green light (issue of a ministerial decision and a Presidential Decree) with the company in February choosing a contractor for the construction of the data centre in Spata.
The emblematic investments of dominant players in the technology sector, such as Microsoft and Google, in our country undoubtedly send resounding messages to the international investment community, with Greece turning into a technological hotspot.
It is worth noting that our country is the first in the wider region of Southeast Europe to acquire a Data Center region (it is a cluster of three data centre facilities).
Until now, Cloud data originating from Greece ended up in countries such as the Netherlands or Ireland. Now, they will be stored in the data centres created in our country.
This development has several advantages, the main ones being the following two: The degree of security increases, while the increase in data transmission speed allows the development of new technological applications and the increase of productivity as a whole for the Greek economy.
The size of the domestic data centre market was valued at $735 million in 2022, according to the latest study by research firm Arizona, but is expected to double by 2028 nearly, given a forecast growth rate of 8.78%, approaching the 1.21 billion dollars, about 1.11 billion euros.
Stafanos Mahtsiras is a columnist for OT.
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