VMware launches German datacentre

Pat Gelsinger announces new European datacentre at this year's VMworld

VMware has announced plans to open a new datacentre in Germany as it expands its vCloud Air platform into Europe.

Pat Gelsinger, VMware's chief executive, made the announcement in his opening keynote speech which kicked off this year's VMworld Europe in Barcelona yesterday.

News of the new datacentre follows on from VMware opening its second UK datacentre in Chessington in July. VMware also has datacentres in Japan and the US.

Gelsinger said: "Germany is our second largest market behind the UK. It also has some of the most interesting and important privacy and governance laws, so given the size of the market and some of those regulatory expectations, it became a relatively straightforward decision to make it the location for our second datacentre in Europe."

Gelsinger highlighted the importance of the software-defined datacentre during his keynote speech saying it was at the "heart of our strategy going forward".

The datacentre, slated to be opened in the first quarter of 2015, will support German and EU compliance and data sovereignty regulations, VMware said.