Schneider Electric, the global leader in energy management and automation, has partnered with Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the largest global provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, to deliver its new HER1 Data Center in Heraklion, Crete. Launched earlier this week as the first carrier-neutral facility on the island, HER1 plays a critical role in reducing Southern Europe’s digital connectivity and infrastructure gap by enabling the interconnection of international, regional and local subsea cables, empowering cloud, telco, and content delivery networks (CDNs) to better serve the surrounding regions. Working in tandem with fast-growing markets including Athens, Barcelona, Marseille, Rome, and Tel Aviv, HER1 forms a central part of Digital Realty’s Mediterranean data center platform and takes a major step towards establishing Greece as a strategic connectivity hub for Southern and Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.