The city of Gliwice, in Poland’s southern Silesian Voivodeship, has announced plans to build its own data center.

The municipality said the facility, which will be designed to Tier III standards, was necessary for it to comply with European Union directives on cybersecurity and to ensure the continuity of its public services should they experience outages or succumb to cyberattacks.

Planning permission for the new data center has been approved, with construction set to be completed by the end of 2028.

No information was released by Gliwice about the facility’s potential computing power. DCD has approached the municipality for comment.

“In many cities, IT systems are dispersed – operating in different locations, often managed separately,” the municipality said in a statement. "Gliwice is focusing on centralization and complete control. The new data center will be connected to the city's existing Security Operations Center – a team that continuously monitors threats and responds to incidents. This will allow all systems to be monitored in a single location, speeding up response to failures and attacks, and making it easier to detect irregularities before they become a problem.”

City-owned company Śląska Sieć Metropolitalna (SMM) will develop the project, which acquired the property for the data center in August 2023. SMM is a local government ICT network operator established in 2009 and owned by the Gliwice local government.

The facility will be located to the south of Gliwice, astride Bojkowska and Toruńska streets, and will be built to the EN 50600 standard for data center management, said the municipality.

As such, the site will be equipped with designated security zones, a warehouse, and a workshop building. Additionally, two transformer stations will be built, along with uninterruptible power systems, appropriate cooling and fire extinguishing systems, and solar panels to generate a small amount of power on-site.

“Data will be transmitted via multiple cable routes,” the city continued. “If one transmission route fails, another will automatically take over.”

Construction of Gliwice’s municipal data center follows recommendations made in the city’s cybersecurity strategy for 2026-2030.

When built, the facility will join the small existing data center market in Gliwice, with 11 such facilities currently operating in the city, according to DataCenters.com.

These include three sites run by the telecommunications provider Orange and the data center provider 3S, and two operated by the IT outsourcing firm COIG.

Learn more about the data center market in Poland and Eastern Europe, and meet with other executives and experts from the region at the DCN Warsaw event later this year.