Data Centers in Italy

Italy – Strategic Mediterranean Connectivity Hub

Executive Summary

Italy serves as a crucial digital gateway connecting Central Europe with Africa, the Middle East, and Asia via a growing network of subsea cables. For businesses targeting these high-growth regions, Italy offers a mature colocation market with excellent cloud access, minimizing latency for financial services, content delivery, and enterprise applications. This strategic location provides a reliable foothold for expanding digital services across the Mediterranean basin.

Italy: At A Glance

Network & Connectivity Ecosystem

Italy's network ecosystem is well-developed, particularly in northern hubs like Milan, establishing it as a primary interconnection point in Southern Europe.

Carrier Density & Carrier Neutrality: The market features over 40 domestic and international carriers, as of September 2025. A healthy number of carrier-neutral facilities ensures competitive pricing and diverse routing options for building resilient networks.

Direct Cloud On-Ramps: With over 7 dedicated cloud on-ramps, businesses can establish low-latency private connections to over 20 distinct cloud regions. Major providers include AWS, Google Cloud (GCP), Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud.

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs): The Milan Internet Exchange (MIX) is the country's primary peering point, concentrating traffic from hundreds of networks. Its presence is vital for reducing latency and improving traffic flow within Italy and to adjacent European markets.

Bare Metal: Bare metal cloud solutions are readily available from multiple providers. Service options exist from providers like Hivelocity and phoenixNAP, supporting workloads that require dedicated physical hardware.

Power Analysis

Average Cost Of Power: Industrial power costs typically range from €0.18 – €0.24/kWh, as of September 2025. This rate, driven by a mix of about 60% fossil fuels and 40% renewables, directly impacts total operational expenditures for high-density deployments.

Power Grid Reliability: The national power grid is reliable, especially in the northern industrial regions where the majority of data centers are located. Major facilities are supported by redundant power feeds from multiple substations, ensuring high levels of uptime for critical operations.

Market Access, Business & Tax Climate

Proximity To Key Business Districts: Major data center clusters are concentrated near Milan, Italy's financial and industrial capital, and Rome, the center of government and multinational business. This proximity allows for single-digit millisecond latency to key enterprise and government end-users.

Regional Market Reach: Italy's geographic position makes it a natural hub for reaching over 150 million consumers in Southern Europe. It is also a critical landing point for subsea cables connecting Europe to North Africa and the Middle East, offering a strategic advantage for inter-regional traffic.

Tax Advantage For Data Centers: Italy offers incentives focused on sustainability and efficiency. Subsidies for investments in energy-efficient systems and related infrastructure improvements help lower long-term operating costs and achieve corporate environmental goals.

Natural Disaster Risk

Overall, Italy has a low natural disaster risk profile, with an INFORM Risk score of 3.0 out of 10, as of September 2025. While the aggregate risk is low, operators must engineer facilities to account for specific regional hazards.

The most significant natural hazards include:

• Earthquake: Score 7.7/10
• Coastal Flood: Score 6.5/10
• River Flood: Score 6.2/10
• Tsunami: Score 6.1/10
• Drought: Score 2.8/10