Operator looking to capitalise on a solid performance in cloud services (up 22% YoY), following a boost from Italy’s National Strategic Hub
TIM announced it will invest around €130 million to grow TIM Enterprise in the cloud and build a new data centre near Rome. The new funds and other initiatives will see the TIM Group’s overall capacity rise to 125 megawatts (up 25 MW), which the operator said confirms its leadership in the colocation market in Italy. Rival Aruba also recently confirmed it will build a €300 million hyperscale data centre campus in Rome, located in the Tecnopolo Tiburtino area to the east of the city.
TIM said the new investment is not new but rather, included in the capex set out in its 2024-2026 business plan, already disclosed to the market. The operator said the initiative is part of a broader group investment strategy to enhance the availability of additional high-performance data centre space in its existing campuses in Rome and Milan, as it aims to “retain its leadership in the Italian market” and respond to the growing needs of companies and the public administration.
Earlier this month, TIM Enterprise reported nine-month total revenues of 2.3 billion euros (up 5.8% YoY) and service revenues of €2.1 billion (up 8% YoY), continuing to outperform the reference market thanks to the defensive strategy on the connectivity business and growth in IT revenues, which accounted for 62% of the total. In particular, the solid performance in cloud services (up 22% YoY) – thanks to the boost from National Strategic Hub – Security (up 84% YoY) and IoT (up 27% YoY) continued. The value of contracts signed during the nine months was up 67% YoY to €3.5 billion, demonstrating the success the operator was having in there enterprise space with cloud services.
Government cloud adoption in central to TIM’s enterprise growth with this coming through Italy’s Polo Strategico Nazionale (National Strategic Hub – PSN) secure cloud infrastructure – the operator has a 45% share. The goal of this project is to bring 75% of Italian administrations to use cloud services by 2026. The initiative envisages the implementation of a dual-region architecture distributed over 4 data centres, interconnected with ultra-broad fibre optic connectivity to ensure business continuity in real time.
Ready for service in 2026
The new data centre is to be built near Rome and will be operational by the end of 2026. TIM Enterprise already has 16 data centres across Italy running through its Noovle brand. The data centre will be connected to TIM’s fibre network, which already connects the group’s other data centres and enables ultra-low latency connection with the region clouds of the hyperscalers in Italy and hosted at the group’s sites – as well as interconnection with the spaces dedicated to the National Strategic Hub.
It will also host high-performance Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) hardware for AI applications and quantum cryptography equipment for maximum security in data transmission. The operator said the new site will be designed and built to “the highest standards of reliability and safety (Rating 4)”, will have among the “world’s best water consumption levels” and will be equipped with a rainwater recovery system so as not to affect the city’s freshwater consumption. Approximately 88% of the waste produced during construction is expected to be recycled.