The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift), is building a European data centre underground as part of a €175m project to make it possible to fully process European transactions in Europe. Mike Fish, CIO at Swift, says the initiative – known as the Distributed Architecture project – is one of three large projects, which are all at different stages of completion. 

Due for completion in 2013, the five-year project will ensure transactions made between European organisations remain in Europe. In the past, transactions would pass through a US data centre to be processed, but the €175m project will mean transactions never have to leave Europe. The DA project involved building an underground data centre in Switzerland, which is near completion. The data centre is underground to improve security and use natural cooling to reduce the carbon footprint.

Source: Computerweekly