The story
Founded in Florence in 1994 as Technorail S.r.l., the company initially operated under the Technet.it brand. In April 2000, this brand was replaced by Aruba.it, which introduced a free dial-up internet service followed by domain registration and web hosting services. In 2003, the company opened a webfarm in Arezzo, a data center housing its web servers. The following year, after transitioning from a limited liability company (S.r.l.) to a joint-stock company (S.p.A.), it officially changed its name to Aruba S.p.A.
In 2005, the company expanded its operations into the Czech Republic and Slovakia through Forpsi.com, and subsequently established a presence in Hungary.
In 2006, Aruba PEC S.p.A. was established. The subsidiary became a certified manager accredited by the National Center for Informatics in Public Administration (CNIPA) and was listed in the public register of Certified Email (PEC) providers. Aruba PEC also functions as a Certification Authority authorized by CNIPA to issue digital signatures.
In 2008, the company launched Aruba Business and Aruba Media Marketing, a division dedicated to online advertising and web marketing. In March 2009, Aruba acquired 100% Actalis S.p.A., a PEC provider and digital signature Certification Authority.
On April 29, 2011, a fire broke out at Aruba's data center in Arezzo, causing an outage that took thousands of websites offline. The fire was contained within the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) room, leaving the servers and data rooms undamaged. This followed a downtime incident on October 6, 2010, which was traced back to human error. Another outage occurred on July 8, 2011, reportedly due to UPS failures.
On September 9, 2011, Aruba launched a cloud computing service across Europe under the Aruba Cloud brand. A Cloud Object Storage service was subsequently added in December 2012. In 2013, the company acquired Homeonline s.r.l., a firm specializing in online public administration and registry procedures. In July 2013, Aruba collaborated with the cybersecurity firm Hacking Team to execute a BGP routing hijack, which restored functionality to one of Hacking Team's remote control products.
On November 11, 2014, Aruba won the auction for the.cloud domain extension, establishing Aruba PEC as the official registry. In early 2015, Homeonline rebranded as Pratiche.it. Later that year, the Italian subsidiaries Alicom, Widestore, and 9Net merged to form Aruba Business s.r.l. In September 2016, Aruba co-founded the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), an industry coalition aimed at establishing a data protection code of conduct to ensure that cloud infrastructure clients process and store data strictly within the EU/EEA. That same month, Aruba became an authorized provider for the Italian digital identity system, SPID.
In October 2017, the company inaugurated the Global Cloud Data Center in Ponte San Pietro, near Bergamo. It was Aruba's third proprietary data center in Italy, certified Rating 4 under the ANSI/TIA 942A standard. In February 2019, Aruba launched its Enterprise division. In 2020, Aruba acquired Idroelettrica Veneta S.p.A. for €11 million. Expanding into the telecommunications sector in March 2021, the company began offering ultra-broadband connectivity services in Italy using a fiber-optic network (FTTH - Fiber To The Home). On June 15, 2022, Euronext completed the migration of its core data center and related services from Basildon, UK, to Aruba's Global Cloud Data Center IT3 in Bergamo.
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In November 2022, Aruba expanded its Bergamo campus by inaugurating two additional data centers (DC-B and DC-C) along with the Aruba Auditorium.
In July 2023, the company announced the launch of ArubaKube, a cloud-native development spin-off created in partnership with the Polytechnic University of Turin to focus on open-source cloud research and development.
On October 2, 2024, Aruba inaugurated the Hyper Cloud Data Center, a new campus located in the Tecnopolo Tiburtino in Rome. The facility is designed to house five independent data centers with a total IT power capacity of 30 MW.
In 2025, Aruba introduced Faktura Smart, an electronic invoicing solution for the Polish market.
From Wikipedia’s article on Aruba S.p.A., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5