Cloud and Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider SingleHop has opened a new data center in Amsterdam it said has been designed to meet a growing need for automated infrastructure and hosting services from Europe, Asia and North Africa.

SingleHop CEO Zak Boca said more than 75% of capacity was reserved inside its AMS-1 data center, which can cater for more than 2,000 servers in 4,330 sq m, before it opened.

“Since announcing the data center, we’ve been flooded with requests from hosting services providers, systems integrators, game developers, and a variety of digital startups,” Boca said.

Market intelligence firm IDC estimates that demand for public cloud services will grow from 1.6% of IT spending in the EU alone in 2011 to 3.6% in 2014 and 9% by 2020.

Boca said he believes companies looking for cloud services are looking for a highly automated and hybrid platform and reduced latency.

This is why Amsterdam was chosen as the location for its first data center outside of the US.

The country has high-capacity fiber infrastructure and many top-tier network providers operate out of the Netherlands.

It also has a strong focus on security with five layers built in and uses 100% green power.

The data center uses cold-aisle cooling with 25kW of cooling capacity per rack with 10MW of power secured for each phase of the facility.

SingleHop also operates two data centers in Chicago and one in Phoenix in the US and Boca said many US-based customers are now looking for a data center presence in other regions around the world.

He said the company plans further worldwide expansion in the future.