VIRTUS Data Centres appoints Christina Mertens to VP role

VIRTUS Data Centres has today named Christina Mertens as Vice President of Business Development, EMEA. Reporting to Darren Watkins, Managing Director of VIRTUS Data Centres, Mertens will be responsible for identifying acquisition opportunities across EMEA.

According to the company, she will also lead VIRTUS’ strategy of EMEA data centre expansion and business development in the region, tasked with defining and executing go-to-market strategies, including identifying and launching VIRTUS operations in Europe and seeking acquisition opportunities throughout EMEA. This is a new role underlining VIRTUS’ aggressive growth ambitions.

“It’s an exciting time to be part of VIRTUS”, said Darren Watkins, Managing Director for VIRTUS. “We have seen amazing growth in cloud and digital transformation with the London data centre market now close to 1GW, having doubled every five years since 2010. Christina has joined our team to help drive our growth across EMEA. With her strong track record of strategic and decisive business leadership, as well as her extensive regional knowledge, it’s clear Christina will be a great asset to our company.”

Christina Mertens’ experience in the EMEA region and data centre industry 

Mertens joins VIRTUS with over ten years’ experience in developing strategies for, and expanding, existing and new hyperscale infrastructure geographies across EMEA. For the past decade, she has worked for Amazon in EMEA, where she expanded the existing AWS data centre regions in colocation and self-built facilities, as well as launched new region geographies as the country manager. 

In her previous role as Data Center Divestiture Principal at Amazon Web Services in EMEA, Christina worked alongside large strategic hyperscale cloud customers, advising them on their infrastructure assets and developing new models to facilitate and enhance their cloud migration journey.

“We are living through a time of accelerated digital transformation”, said Christina. “Delivering reliable, resilient and responsible digital infrastructure to customers is mission critical and I’m really proud to be part of a company that has been leading the way in designing and operating cutting-edge data centres for more than ten years. I look forward to helping VIRTUS deliver operational excellence to customers across EMEA.”