An infographic highlights why Ireland is the best place in the world to host your data. As well as being the international crossroads for global communication, Ireland is home to more than 1,000 multinationals and ICT accounts for €50bn worth of exports, and it has its green credentials fully in order.

The infographic, compiled by Interxion, contains seven reasons why Ireland is the ideal location for hosting data.

1. Location

It shows that, location-wise, Ireland is situated on the axis between the American and European continents, placing it at the heart of the trading world.

As such, Ireland is effectively a gateway to a European market of more than 500m people

2. Connectivity

In terms of connectivity, Ireland offers a choice of secure connectivity routes to Europe and around the globe. There are at least 11 subsea cables connecting Ireland to the UK and Dublin’s T50 broadband ring – a metropolitan area network – runs 44km of fibre around the city and connects to 27 international data carriers.

3. The Green Island

In the past year, Ireland’s credentials as a hub for international data centres were given a welcome boost when Apple revealed it was investing €850m in a state-of-the-art data centre in Athenry in Galway. This will be a renewable energy data centre and Apple will fund at least six renewable energy projects to power the data centre, which will no doubt be cooled by Atlantic winds.

In fact, Ireland has been aggressively exploring the use of renewable power and, for cooling data centres, the country boasts the ideal climate with no extreme variations. Temperatures range from an average low of 6ºC to an average high of 20ºC.

By 2020, Ireland is targeting a fuel mix of 40pc renewables.

4. Workforce

As a tech hub, Ireland has one of the youngest and most highly-educated populations in Europe, with the median age of the population just 35 and 48pc of 25-to-34-year-olds holding a third-level degree qualification.

5. Reputation

Ireland is home to more than 1,000 multinational companies, including seven of the world’s top global ICT companies, nine out of 10 of the global pharmaceutical giants, nine out of 10 of the global software companies and three out of the top five game companies are based in Ireland.

6. Tech hub

High-speed, low-latency networks are making Ireland a favoured destination for big data and analytics capability.

As a result, the ICT sector accounts for more than €50bn of exports a year and this is the second highest level of ICT exports in the world.

7. Pro-business

Ireland is an open economy supported by its low corporate tax rate of 12.5pc. Forbes has listed the country as No 1 in its list of Best Countries for Business in 2013 and No 1 for Investment Incentives.

Infographic – why Ireland is the best place to host your data

Ireland rainbow image via Shutterstock