The Data Centres Ireland 2022 exhibition took place in sunny Dublin on the 16th and 17th of November. The event was hosted at RDS Arena in Ballsbridge, south of Dublin. Sims Lifecycle Services (SLS) attended the event and met key people from the booming Irish data center industry.
Kicking off the event, Garry Connolly, founder of Host in Ireland, emphasized the sense of community within the data center industry in this growing market. Pre-competitive collaboration is contributing to the growth of the data center industry in Ireland as well as Ireland’s reputation as an export market for data center talent. Host In Ireland have been fundamental in maintaining that sense of community with organizations representing all parts of the data center ecosystem working together to support industry growth and progress.
The conference program included panel discussions with industry leaders discussing key industry issues such as the importance of sustainability in the data center industry. The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact and its role in helping data centers to achieve their sustainability goals was a prominent discussion point. As always, energy is a hot topic and triggered lively discussions about renewable energy, sustainability and data center demand.
In one panel session the origin of data centers was discussed. To the question, ‘Why data centers started in the first place?’, the main reason given was that “it’s not very practical having closets of data inside your office”. What’s clear is that the days of servers residing in dusty corners of our offices are well behind us. The data center industry continues to grow exponentially, and Ireland is a key market for European data management.
It was a great pleasure to attend Data Centres Ireland 2022, and we look forward for next year’s event.