Vertiv (NYSE: VRT), a global provider of critical digital infrastructure, today announced it will supply next-generation infrastructure for ROM1, Digital Realty’s first data center in Italy with a planned capacity above 3 MW. The agreement extends the comprehensive suite of Vertiv solutions and existing technology implementations with Digital Realty across European locations, including Paris, Madrid, and Amsterdam.

The ROM1 facility will feature advanced cooling and power infrastructure designed specifically for high-performance computing (HPC) environments. The technology implementation includes innovative free-cooling systems that leverage Rome’s climate conditions, and highly energy-efficient power management systems designed to support high-density workloads.

The project will be implemented in phases, with the facility planned to begin operations in 2027. ROM1 will serve as a carrier-neutral facility optimized for AI and machine learning workloads. Its strategic location will establish Rome as a key digital hub, connecting to major Mediterranean cities through fiber networks and submarine cables. Expansion plans also include connectivity in Barcelona, launching in early 2026. The new facility will support the company’s growth as a leader in the Mediterranean, complementing its existing data centers in Marseille, Athens, and Crete.

“Rome is emerging as a crucial gateway for digital infrastructure between Europe and the Mediterranean,” says Alessandro Talotta, managing director, Italy of Digital Realty. “The cutting-edge technologies selected for ROM1 will help establish it as a strategic AI hub, setting new benchmarks for energy efficiency and performance in high-performance computing.”

“The growing adoption of AI applications is driving the need for more sophisticated data center infrastructure,” says Karsten Winther, president for EMEA at Vertiv. “Our cooling and power solutions are built on decades of experience in supporting the most demanding applications and are designed for projected scalability while helping customers meet their efficiency objectives.”

ROM1’s technical innovations include AI-ready cooling systems that adapt to varying workload demands and high-efficiency power distribution designed for intensive computing. The facility incorporates smart environmental controls that respond to real-time conditions and are integrated with alternative energy sources. These technological choices reflect both companies’ focus on supporting advanced computing needs while minimizing energy consumption and environmental impact.

Imagine a traveler’s perfect day planning itself, rerouting around a rainstorm, prompting a café to add staff before the lunch rush, suggesting a quiet gallery when crowds swell.  This is the promise of Agentic Tourism, an AI-powered operating model introduced in a new white paper by TOURISE and Globant, a digitally native company that helps organizations thrive in a digital and AI-powered future, with strategic contribution from Kearney. The report, titled Tourism’s AI Takeover: Reinventing Travel through Agentic Tourism, presents a practical framework for transforming the tourism experience making it more seamless, intelligent, and emotionally resonant.

In 2024, tourism generated 10.9 trillion dollars, nearly 10 percent of global GDP, and is projected to reach 16.5 trillion dollars by 2035. AI in the tourism market is expected to grow from 3.4 billion dollars in 2024 to 13.9 billion dollars by 2030; destinations face a clear choice, evolve with coordinated AI adoption or risk fragmentation, inefficiency, and diminished traveler satisfaction.

Released ahead of the inaugural TOURISE Summit in Riyadh this November 11 to 13, 2025, the white paper offers a roadmap for public and private sector leaders to apply AI across five key dimensions: experience, operations, sustainability, wellbeing, and economic opportunity. The goal is to help destinations across the entire tourism ecosystem to act now, scale responsibly, and remain human-centered.

A Coordinated Model for the Future of Travel

Agentic Tourism introduces a system of autonomous AI agents governed by people and shared standards. These agents are designed to deliver measurable impact. They aim to reduce wait times, boost satisfaction scores, increase eco-friendly bookings, and unlock new economic value. The model includes five agent archetypes:

• Experience Maximizer curates and adapts itineraries in real time, managing disruptions and enhancing personalization.
• Operations Optimizer balances staff, assets, and services to improve efficiency and reduce bottlenecks.
• Regeneration Guardian surfaces environmental and social impacts to promote responsible travel choices.
• Wellness Agent uses contextual data to support traveler health, comfort, and safety.
• Opportunity Connector matches visitors’ interests to local networks, events, and collaborators to create economic value.

The white paper serves as a strategic playbook, helping tourism destinations, governments, operators, platforms, and communities, implement these innovations without losing the human touch that defines meaningful travel.

“Agentic Tourism is not just a model. It is a movement and those who adopt it first will shape the trajectory of future sector disruption,” said His Excellency Ahmed Al-Khateeb, Minister of Tourism and Chairman of the Board of TOURISE, “AI empowers every country to embrace an era that uplifts both established and emerging destinations, ensuring inclusive access for all. To accelerate innovation across tourism and its converging sectors, TOURISE will continue to collaborate with industry experts on a series of white papers presenting actionable data and high-impact research to address the sector’s most pressing challenges.”

“Tourism’s next chapter will be championed by destinations that orchestrate technology around people, not the other way around,” said Martín Migoya, CEO and Co Founder at Globant. “Agentic Tourism provides a blueprint to digitize end-to-end digital experiences so hosts, travel operators, and destinations can transform isolated innovations into interconnected, adaptive and meaningful interactions at every journey.”

Snowflake, the AI Data Cloud company, and SAP SE, a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, today announced a new collaboration to enable organizations to seamlessly leverage Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud and SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) with semantically rich data. The joint effort will make Snowflake’s data & AI platform available as a SAP solution extension for SAP BDC customers. The new offering, SAP Snowflake solution extension for SAP Business Data Cloud, unites SAP’s deep expertise in mission-critical business processes and semantically rich data with Snowflake’s unified platform capabilities for building AI and machine learning solutions. SAP and Snowflake are also enabling zero copy sharing between SAP BDC and Snowflake to help customers get richer insights, build enterprise-grade intelligent applications and unlock AI-powered innovation that fuels business transformation.

“By tightly integrating SAP and Snowflake, we’re making it simple for enterprises to connect their critical business data with its rich context in SAP with the power of seamless AI app and data agent development at scale in Snowflake,” added Christian Kleinerman, EVP of Product, Snowflake. “Enterprises can now innovate faster with Snowflake and SAP BDC and seamlessly share data between the platforms —zero-copy and fully governed.”

SAP Snowflake brings Snowflake into the open data ecosystem of SAP BDC and the business data fabric–empowering customers with greater openness and choice, while extending SAP BDC with Snowflake’s AI, analytics, data engineering, Marketplace, and collaboration capabilities. Customers can use SAP BDC with SAP Snowflake as a cloud-scale compute and storage option to extend the value of their data. Leveraging bidirectional, zero-copy data access, data and AI teams can work with semantically rich SAP data products in real time, within a unified governance framework. As a result, customers can harmonize SAP and non-SAP data while optimizing total cost of ownership across workloads and build agents and AI applications in SAP Snowflake fueled by trusted SAP data products.

“Bringing Snowflake to SAP Business Data Cloud empowers our customers with openness and choice,” said Irfan Khan, President and Chief Product Officer for SAP Data and Analytics, SAP SE. “Together, we combine SAP’s decades of leadership in mission-critical business applications with Snowflake’s modern data platform to deliver a unified, enterprise-ready, and SAP-supported experience that extends the value of business data across the entire ecosystem.”

With SAP Snowflake, customers can:

• Build a trusted, AI-ready data foundation to harmonize SAP and non-SAP data: Unify their data landscape with an integrated business data fabric—enabling more seamless zero-copy sharing, enriched modeling, and a complete, business-ready view of their data in real time for all data engineering, analytics, and AI and machine learning workflows across the enterprise.
• Accelerate AI business value with semantically rich data: Simplify AI governance, ground AI in organizational knowledge, and build tailored agents—helping to ensure more secure, context-rich, and intelligent applications across the enterprise.
• Develop intelligent applications grounded in mission-critical business data: Build, deploy, and continuously optimize intelligent applications faster with a harmonized and democratized data foundation powered by semantically rich, trusted data products that accelerate the pace of innovation and production.

In addition to SAP Snowflake, the partnership also includes SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Snowflake, a capability enabling bidirectional, zero copy data sharing with Snowflake. Enterprises already using Snowflake can leverage SAP BDC Connect to integrate their existing instances of Snowflake with SAP Business Data Cloud for more seamless, zero‑copy access, providing Snowflake users with real-time access to semantically rich SAP data products—without duplication.

SAP and Snowflake are supporting thousands of customers, including industry leaders like AstraZeneca, as they transform their industries with this partnership.

“AstraZeneca is constantly pushing the boundaries of science and is pioneering in life-changing medicines,” said Russell Smith, Vice President of ERP Transformation Technology, AstraZeneca. “Data and AI are central to achieving this aim, and our close collaboration with SAP and Snowflake complements our ability to access, process and analyze real-time data. This announcement will accelerate our mission and recognizes that every minute matters to make breakthroughs for patients.”

SAP Snowflake is planned to be generally available in Q1 2026. SAP BDC Connect for Snowflake is planned to be generally available in H1 2026.