CIX starts operations at Sines Data Centre

DE-CIX, specialised in the operation of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), has announced that it has expanded its presence in Portugal and started operating at the Sines Data Center.

After Start Campus was involved in Operation Influencer, which is investigating previous government corruption over contracts, and in which it is involved in a Public Ministry probe, the company has continued the Sines 4.0 project, planning to start data centers in the last quarter of this year.

One of the first clients to operate at the Sines Data Centre, CIX, stated in a communiqué this Wednesday that this step “marks a significant expansion of its presence in Portugal”, where it has been present for 5 years.

The platform operating from Sines, in the facility developed by Start Campus, “will support the digitisation of local companies, providing access to high-performance interconnection and connectivity to the cloud, in addition to strengthening DE CIX’s current and future customers with greater geographic diversity, resilience and network performance,” says the company that offers its interconnection services in 55 locations distributed in Europe, Africa, North America, Middle East.

“We are excited to announce that DE CIX is now ready to operate in SINES DC,” commented Theresa Bobis, Regional Director Southern Europe at DE CIX. And the prospects for the future are positive: “Sines is on the verge of becoming a crucial hub for several subsea systems, interconnecting and serving Southern Europe, with greater reach for Africa and other European markets. Expanding our presence in Southern Europe to Sines will increase connectivity to Portugal and beyond”, she said.

Robert Dunn, CEO of Start Campus, stresses that the arrival of DE CIX “represents a significant milestone and testimony to the growing importance of Sines as a hub for connectivity.” “The data centre of gravity is moving further south in Europe,” added the head of Europe’s largest data centre campus, with 1.2 GW of power capacity for IT servers.

Start Campus, which has Davidson Kempner (from the US) and Pioneer Point Partners (from the UK) as shareholders, has so far invested €250 million in the project. The company expects to reach close to US$300 million by the end of the year and double that investment by 2025.

Photo: Stefan Funke from Frankfurt, Germany