Data Centres: Continued Growth In APAC

Global demand for data centres is growing and Digital Realty continues to see strong demand for best-in-class data centre space across all of their markets, according to its SVP and APAC regional head Kris Kumar.

“Each year we commission our own research to gauge global demand. In the 2012 results, 76% of responses from companies in APAC indicated that their organisations would expand their data centre infrastructure in 2012 – and 82% planned on using a third-party to design and/or build these new projects.”

Kris described Southeast Asia as an opportunity for the data centre market. He said that international consulting firm BroadGroup predicted data centre capacity in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand to increase 61.4% over the next five years.

Kris Kumar

“Our presence in Singapore clearly demonstrates our commitment to that market as we see continued growth in the area. “

Drivers and barriers
Continued adoption of public, private and hybrid cloud solutions is driving demand for outsourcing to data centre providers like Digital Realty.

Not forgetting also demand from enterprise customers and the increasing proliferation of data requiring appropriate computing and storage environments continue to drive leased data centre services.

“By outsourcing to Digital Realty, enterprise customers can utilise our financial resources, design & construction expertise as well as benefit from our global operating platform to ensure a highly reliable and well-maintained, physically secure facility.”

Security and reliability risk are some of the barriers for enterprise customers going into a colocation environment, but Digital Realty sees it as an opportunity to offer ‘special’ features like full sovereignty over their facilities, to the customers.

Kris said, “Our Turn-Key Flex solution has a six-year history of five-9s reliability (99.999% uptime).  It is a move-in ready data centre facility where the customer simply installs their racks, servers, networking equipment, etc., and maintains full control over the computing environment. 

“Our Powered Base Building solution provides customers with powered shell space where they can build out their data centre using their own capital and resources.  Lastly, we offer customers a fully bespoke solution, which can include site selection and acquisition.”

Expansion
Kris made no mention of Malaysia when it came to their expansion plans, but he described how Digital Realty has fully operational data centres in Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore.

They even recently expanded footprint in Sydney and Melbourne, expecting at least a second phase data expansion in the latter to be completed later this year. In November 2013, a joint venture with Century Link Company Savvis, is also expected to be operational.

Kris explained, “We are constantly looking at new markets to determine where it makes sense for our customers, investors and our organisation expand and grow. We have a very thorough due diligence process to evaluate new markets to ensure the demand for data centre space, the business environment and the requirements from our customers support the decision to expand.”

He added that Digital Realty also see Japan and China as potential markets, and concluded, “We are tracking the Asia Pacific market as a whole very closely.”