No Surprises for Digital Realty Croatia in 2025

The business year 2025 was in line with projections for Digital Realty’s Croatian subsidiary. It was a year of high pressure for data centers' capacity with significant investments, said Goran Đoreski, CEO of Croatian operations in Digital Realty. The high usage of the current capacity shows that the market was hungry for more storage and computing.

How do you assess your company's performance in 2025, and what were the key business highlights?

In the overall market, this year was marked by even greater adoption of AI-based solutions, and our data centers supported our customers in this transition.

Digital Realty's operations in Croatia in 2025 were in line with expectations, with exceptionally high capacity utilization of the ZAG1 data center and, as expected, stable operation without incidents or any downtime, as well as the usual high level of satisfaction of our users.

In 2025, Digital Realty has been recognized not only as a trusted data center partner for local and global customers – thanks to our global portfolio of extremely well-connected locations based on our PlatformDIGITAL, which significantly helps the businesses of our customers who need to connect to customers or their own remote locations – but also as a company committed to providing the safest possible environment for customers and actively engaged in improving the working conditions of our employees.

Namely, in April 2025, Digital Realty in Croatia became one of the winners of the annual recognition for improving occupational safety, awarded by the Ministry of Labor, Pension System, Family and Social Policy under the special Ordinance on Recognition and Awards for Improving Occupational Safety. This is the second award in this area in less than six months, following the recognition that Digital Realty received in December 2024 from the scientific and professional journal Sigurnost, and it has additional weight since it is awarded by the competent ministry. Digital Realty has proactively developed a comprehensive system for taking care of safety and health that not only ensures the safety of all visitors and users but also addresses the specific risks and dangers associated with the IT industry in the digital age.

What are the most significant events or projects that you would highlight from 2025?

The most significant project we implemented or completed in 2025 is certainly the expansion of our Zagreb data center, which was completed in the fall of this year.

Namely, some time ago it became clear that the capacity of the ZAG1 center is significantly lower than the demand we have from our customers. In order to close this gap, we proceeded to expand the data center at the existing location, which was successfully completed a few months ago.

The ZAG1 data center has been expanded by an additional 1,600 m2 of ICT and technical space. The facility remains one of the most connected data centers in the Adriatic region, with more than 50 connectivity providers available on site. Through ServiceFabric Connect, users can additionally access a wide range of global connectivity providers as well as direct on-ramps to leading global cloud service providers.

The growing demand for data center capacity in Zagreb is driven by increasing digitalization, the transition towards electronic document exchange (for example, the obligation of electronic exchange of invoices between business entities, which comes into force on January 1, 2026, is expected to significantly boost digital transformation), the growth of the Croatian economy, and the Croatian Government's Digital Croatia 2030 strategy.

The expanded center is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment from our suppliers, including fire protection systems and redundant power supplies, with optimized energy consumption that is matched with the energy from renewable sources.

The expansion of ZAG1 is just one segment of Digital Realty's strategy to strengthen our presence in Europe. Digital Realty is also expanding its presence in Greece, building new data centers in Rome, Barcelona, Crete, and Tel Aviv, and upgrading the company's existing presence in Frankfurt, Athens, and Marseille.

What are your expectations for 2026 in terms of investment, business growth, and market development?

Given the significant expansion of the capacity of our Zagreb data center, we expect business growth in 2026 as the center's capacity is filled with new users or existing users who will need greater capacity for their business.

In the industry in general, we expect further adoption of AI, albeit with increased caution and requests for a clearly defined return on such investments, as well as a continued emphasis on optimized energy consumption and the tendency to source as much energy as possible from renewable sources.

Digital Realty is well-positioned in this area, currently having more than 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy in its global portfolio, and powering 100% of its European portfolio, as well as its US colocation portfolio, with renewable energy. We are also a member of the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact, which aims to make European data centers climate neutral by 2030, and we will continue to work towards this goal this year and beyond.