A data center co-location company called decided that Iceland would be the perfect place for its first facility because of the country's climate, natural resources and network connectivity to the United States and Europe.

The Icelandic site offers access to geothermal and hydroelectric energy, free every day of the year, and multi-terabit-per-second connectivity to America and Europe. Verne Global, which plans to build efficient data centers throughout the world, is in the middle of construction in Iceland and will be able to serve customers by year-end.

The data center will purchase power for four cents per kilowatt-hour, whereas in the United States are about  10 cents and can be 20 cents in London, says Tate Cantrell, CTO of Verne Global. By taking advantage of outside air to cool servers in the Iceland data center, Verne Global can further reduce a customer's electric bill.

"There's a considerable savings opportunity here," Cantrell says. "If you look at data centers from a macro level, the percentage of total cost that power represents continues to grow every year. It really is something that customers look at and say 'this [Iceland] is absolutely a great place for data centers.'"