Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), operating as Interxion Croatia LLC in Croatian market, the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions, today announced plans to grow its presence in Southeast Europe by acquiring a land parcel to expand its Zagreb campus. The parcel is located close to Digital Realty’s existing ZAG1 data center, one of the most highly connected facilities in the region.

The land parcel is capable of supporting up to 30 megawatts of data center capacity which enables Digital Realty to address the increasing demand for colocation services in Croatia and the wider Southeast Europe region. The development of any new facilities will follow a phased approach in line with market demand and existing customers’ expansion plans.

New development in Zagreb would complement Digital Realty’s existing presence in Vienna by enabling customers to use additional regional carriers and alternative routes for increased diversity and resilience in the region. This expansion coincides with Digital Realty’s ongoing expansion in Greece, allowing international companies to implement their strategies for more distributed workloads.

As a result of Digital Realty’s campus approach, all of its data centers in Zagreb will have access to the 50+ connectivity providers present in ZAG1 including international networks, regional networks, mobile operators, internet exchanges and the network PoPs of major cloud service providers.

“This land parcel expands Digital Realty’s Zagreb campus and supports the development of additional capacity. Upon completion, our new Zagreb facility will enable customers to deploy their critical infrastructure in world-class data centers with access to a rich and densely populated connected data community through our existing ZAG1 facility, along with access to the rest of our global footprint via PlatformDIGITAL®, our global data center platform,” said Jan-Pieter Anten, Group Managing Director EMEA, Digital Realty.

Goran Đoreski, Managing Director, Digital Realty in Croatia said, “Acting as a gateway to Southeast Europe, an expanded presence in Zagreb enables us to extend our current relationships with major platform providers and global enterprises and become a true connectivity hub for the region. We’re excited to take this next step in expanding PlatformDIGITAL® to support our customers in deploying their critical services around the world.”

Given Zagreb’s geographical location and the robust community of interest at ZAG1, the campus expansion will strengthen the city’s position as a key strategic gateway to Southeast Europe, an area analysts expect to grow significantly over the next few years as major service providers, over-the-top (OTT) media platforms and content delivery networks look to become more distributed in the region. Customers will benefit from improved latency to end users located in both Croatia and the wider Balkan region, which is estimated to have a combined population of more than 60 million people.

Moreover, new data center capacity will be well-placed to accommodate the colocation needs of local enterprises as they look to move their data away from their own premises and into more secure, sustainable, and cost-effective colocation facilities, ultimately accelerating the adoption of hybrid IT in Southeast Europe.