Salesforce.com plans to open three data centers in Europe.  This Expansion will create 500 additional jobs.  Salesforce.com is building on success in Europe, after posting a 41 percent jump in European revenue during its fiscal 2014.

This was in the context of not so great numbers overall.  They recently posted a greater loss than expected.  As a result, the CFO resigned.

The company will open its first U.K. data center in August, and additional data centers in France and Germany during 2015.

The objective is to lower application latency to European clients.  Also, with suspicions rising around the NSA scandal, this allows European companies to keep their data in Europe.  This could result in even more sales for Salesforce.com, and more use of SaaS in Europe.

The expansion of Salesforce.com is more of an emerging trend.  Customers who consume cloud services, SaaS as well as IaaS and PaaS, are beginning to insist that their data be located within the same country.  Other cloud providers, such as AWS, already have an international presence.  In a few years, this will be the norm.