Warsaw has been establishing itself as one of the biggest data centers over the past few years. After Berlin and Madrid, it is one of the top three fastest growing and most promising European data center markets outside FLAPD (the long-established data centers that rose around financial markets: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin.

It is also by far the most eastward data center among top European data centers, the nearest one being Berlin, which makes its location particularly favorable. Just like the old amber trade route, Warsaw is a telecom nexus between western, central and eastern Europe, as well as with Scandinavian countries.

This year, we’ve seen a number of new data center investments pouring into Poland: In April, Microsoft launched a new cloud region in Poland: Azure Poland Central, the first cloud data center in Central and Eastern Europe, consisting of three independent locations around Warsaw, each with one or more data centers. Microsoft expects that the new data processing region will eliminate some barriers to cloud adoption and will account for about 16.5% of new revenue ($45.7 billion) by 2026, according to IDC Research. Microsoft believes that its Warsaw cloud platform will provide users with a competitive advantage in terms of operational speed and minimum delays. 

A month later, French data center provider Data4 announced its PLN 1 billion investment in Jawczyce near Warsaw, encompassing four facilities with a total capacity of 60 MW.

The moves have emboldened local players too.

Home grown Beyond.pl announced in September that it’s planning to establish a network of local data centers (edge data centers), across the region. They will connect to Beyond.pl’s existing campus in Poznań. The company is looking forward and preparing for the next wave of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and 5G.

Demand seems to back up this optimistic outlook. According to PRM’s recent report, two-thirds of companies increased their expenditure on data centers in 2022 and in 2023 the figure is expected to grow further. The market is clearly diverging into wholesale and retail data center services.

“We generate a great amount of data… not just in business, but also in daily life, which is why I believe that the data center market is the backbone and growth platform for the digitizations of economies,” Adam Ponichtera, head of Data4 Poland, said.

Data centers are expected to grow at a double-digit pace. Experts anticipate an almost 28% growth of data center space in 2025. Data centers’ power capacity is also forecast to increase, nearly three-fold by the end of the decade. In 2022, the total data center capacity stood at 120 MW, in 2027 it is expected to reach 215 MW, and keep growing up to 300 MW (in the most expansive scenario even to 500 MW) by 2030.