Northern Ireland’s brand new financial-services-oriented business park called the Titanic Quarter will soon become home to an £80m data center erected by Data City Exchange. The quarter sits on a 150-acre site in Belfast where the infamously unfortunate passenger liner RMS Titanic was built in the early 20th century.

The Titanic Exchange (name of the future data center) will be the first facility in a network of data centers DCE plans to build in the UK, Ireland and the Caribbean. At completion of Phase I, the data center will provide space and power for more than 1,000 IT racks.

DCE managing director John Eland said the Titanic Quarter had a highly advanced telecom infrastructure, a key factor in the company’s decision to locate its flagship facility in the business park.

“Northern Ireland’s direct fiber optic link to North America is a major draw for customers whose operations depend on their ability to access data on both sides of the Atlantic and Far East,” he said in a statement.

“As part of the DCE network, DCE Titanic Exchange will benefit from direct, high speed connectivity to all other DCE locations as well as global internet exchanges in London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.”

The Titanic Quarter is an ongoing development on Belfast’s Queen’s Island. The vision includes a large financial-services center, a science park, a college campus, a film studio, a hotel, several million square feet of office space, a government office, a Titanic visitor attraction and a global telecommunications hub.

Phase I of the planned 750,000-sq-ft financial-services center is complete. Most of it is already occupied by Citigroup. Other firms already present in the quarter include IBM, SAP, Fidessa, HBO and Microsoft.

In Phase II of its data center development, DCE plans to add space for 1,600 more racks. The company plans to launch the second phase in 2013.

Its other future data center locations in the UK include Wirral, Sheffield, Bristol and Newcastle. DCE also plans to build a data center in Dublin, Ireland. More sites are on the slate in Europe, US and Grand Bahama.