“It was a tough, tough job,” Digital Realty’s MD for France and SVP overseeing the Mediterranean region, Fabrice Coquio, tells Capacity.
“Crete is more known for vacations and tourism than for data centres. There were no companies with relevant expertise here, so we had to bring in talent from outside Greece,” he explains.
The facility situated in Heraklion marks a key step in the company’s broader Mediterranean strategy. With Marseille already established as one of the top global data hubs, the company is now building out complementary locations.
“Marseille will remain Marseille,” Coquio says. “We need regional hubs nearby so we can offer diversity. That’s why we’re investing in Genoa, Rome, Barcelona, Athens and now Crete,” he says.
A strategic location
The decision to launch the new data centre in Crete is not just about proximity, it is more about utilising geography to boost performance and efficiency.
“When you look at the map, Marseille is the shortest way from the Med to the core of Europe. It’s the same story with Crete. If you want to distribute to the East Med – the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Egypt – why go all the way to Marseille and come back? That adds latency and cost,” Coquio notes.
He also reveals that the location of the HER1 data centre offers a unique advantage for subsea cable routing, thanks to its central location in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“Our customers are telling us: ‘We’re just passing by Crete. We can do a small branch, which doesn’t cost a lot, and then you, Digital Realty, gather the content and redistribute it,’” he says.
Pablo Ruiz-Escribano, SVP secure power & data centre business of Europe at Schneider Electric also added that the decision to build in Crete was made by Digital Realty.
“We’re there to support them wherever they choose. Once they decide on a location, we co-design the infrastructure, deliver it and support them through commissioning and ongoing maintenance,” he reveals.
A fast, sustainable build
The Greek island, better known for tourism than tech, lacked a local pool of data centre expertise, Coquio says. As a result, this posed challenges in terms of workforce availability. To overcome this, Digital Realty brought in professionals from across Greece and even from abroad.
Additionally, the company partnered with Schneider Electric to adopt a prefabricated model for the build.
“We chose a prefabricated model, built in Barcelona, shipped over by boat, docked, and installed here,” he explains. “Prefabrication reduces the equipment and materials needed onsite, lowering the carbon footprint and the facility operates on 100% renewable energy.”
“For us, energy is at the heart of our mission. A data centre is also an electrical plant.”
However, thanks to the prefabricated approach, Digital Realty was able to finish the project in under 12 months, a time frame not typical in the data centre industry.
“We didn’t aim to be in the Guinness Book of Records,” Coquio jokes, “but we had customers waiting for us to be ready.”
Meanwhile, Schneider Electric’s Ruiz-Escribano revealed there were technical constraints with the HER1 data centre project.
“The main challenge is the need to deliver infrastructure in a very short time due to skyrocketing demand. Also, new use cases, like AI, require completely different technical solutions compared to traditional data centre.
“AI introduces much higher power densities and requires new technologies that aren’t yet fully mature. So we’re doing a lot of custom, ad hoc work to meet these needs. In contrast, traditional data centres are more standardised and predictable,” he states.
However, the two companies overcame the challenge by closely collaborating with their customers.
“We’ve increased manufacturing capacity at several plants and strengthened our partner network,” Ruiz-Escribano explains
“We also forecast more than a year ahead to hire and train the field service reps we’ll need for installations and maintenance. It’s all about anticipation".
Creating the ecosystem
Though only a handful of direct jobs are created by data centre operations, “we can operate this with fewer than 10 people,” Coquio reveals.
However, it’s the customers who drive real economic activity, he notes.
“They bring in their own technicians, engineers, and subcontractors to run their operations 24/7. We build the infrastructure, they build the services, it's quite as simple as that.”
“Our data centres are neutral spaces where this manufacturing and exchange can happen efficiently. We don’t interfere, tax, or control that flow. We simply provide the best environment for it to take place. That’s why we focus on multi-tenant environments, with as much diversity as possible.”
However, the vision for the Mediterranean doesn’t stop with Crete, he reveals.
“We have to execute our strategy- from Barcelona to Tel Aviv,” the next phase could be on the southern bank of the Med. Morocco, Egypt, maybe one day. But that depends on the maturity of those local markets and whether they become more deregulated in telecom.”
“We’re not magicians. We just listen carefully to what our customers say -and more importantly, to what they need,” he concludes.
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