Digital Realty has purchased a 3.5 acre (152,460 sq ft) land parcel in Ferriers-en-Brie to the west of Paris to build a 12MW data center.

The €6.1 million ($6.9m) purchase sees Digital Realty coming back to Paris for the first time after it sold its St Denis, Paris data center to the colocation giant Equinix in 2016.

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Equinix paid €190 million ($212m) to buy the St. Denis facility from its rival Digital Realty, adding it to the pair of International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers it already operates in Paris at Rue Ambroise Croizat.

This happened at the same time as a complex rebalancing required by regulators, after Equinix bought Telecity in 2015. That merger gave Equinix such a strong position that the EU required it to sell eight facilities - in London, Amsterdam and Paris.

As things turned out, all the properties Equinix sold off went to Digital Realty, building up the strength of its rival. However, at the same time DR sold its Paris facility to Equinix. This was not such a surprise as it might seem, as St. Denis (a dense interconnection hub) already hosted a core Equinix node, among the main traffic exchanges in France.

Now Digital Realty is coming back, and has said that it will begin construction on the data center in the fourth quarter of 2019.

A. William Stein, Digital Realty CEO said: “Given local supply constraints and rapidly growing enterprise colocation and hyperscale customer demand, Paris is an attractive connectivity hub poised for significant growth, and we are delighted to re-establish a strong foothold in this key global metro.”

Digital Realty operates 22 data centers across Europe, located in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Geneva, Frankfurt and Manchester.

In May of this year Digital Realty opened its second Dublin facility. The 5MW facility is located 30 minutes west of the city center, and brings Digital Realty's total investment in Ireland to more than €200 million ($224m).