Data centres of Malaysia: Upward and onward

By Cat Yong

Much more can be done about the local data centre industry. At least that is what the 17 founding members of the Malaysian Data Centre Alliance (MDCA), MDeC, PEMANDU and Outsourcing Malaysia are pooling their resources for.

MDCA Chairman Billy Lee said, “A (targeted) 20 percent local industry growth from 2012, is still ok but it could be better.” According to Lee who is also the CEO IT outsourcing services provider, Free Net Business Solutions, of all the verticals that have contributed to this growth in terms of revenue, content and tech companies, along with telcos and financial services industry, are the major generators.

When asked what is the main motivation behind 17 different commercial data centre operators to work together in harmony, Lee had stated, “The main motivation behind MDCA, is to have a uniform voice in the industry that can help address the specific challenges. Without MDCA, we won’t be able to come together to work on it,” Lee had said.

After an initial workshop, five main challenges had been identified in the areas of business development, connectivity & bandwidth, green tech standards, energy and standards & policies.

Of the eight committee members selected from the 17 founding data centre members, five have been tasked to head up each of the five challenges or initiatives that were identified. For example, AIMS Data Centre CEO Chiew Kok Hin is an MDCA committee member who also overlooks business development for the data centre alliance.

With Outsourcing Malaysia providing treasurer and secretariat support, MDeC taking on an advisory and support role and PEMANDU overseeing the whole development of Entry Point Project 3 (EPP3) which aims to position Malaysia as a world class data centre hub, the MDCA has its work cut out for them.

For example, with MDeC as facilitator, the MDCA is in discussion with the telco industry to reduce the cost of bandwidth and connectivity.  Malaysia’s electric utility company, Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) and the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water (KeTTHA), are other parties that the MDCA is engaging in negotiations.

“It is a long process to work, but we hope to finalise negotiations on bandwidth and energy pricing, and be able to announce a lower overall cost for end users,” said Lee.

Benefits of unity
One of MDeC’s key initiatives under the EPP3 was to create an alliance of data centre players, and there are significant reasons to do so.

“Now, standards and policies are clear for the entire industry. There is better compliance with rules and regulations by data centre operators, and more awareness about how to handle concerns around standards and policies.’

All this is also a good stepping stone towards working on green initiatives and Lee opined, “There has to be localisation of green guidelines for a country like Malaysia.”

Besides a green data centre forum, MDCA hopes to set up a Green Tech Lab that would work on sustainable reference designs for its member data centres to implement.

The alliance and its initiatives, could also help generate domestic and foreign demand and ultimately grow business for the industry.

For example, the Malaysian Data Centre Alliance actively participated at relevant regional events like CommunicAsia 2013 in Singapore, Huawei Cloud Congress 2013 in Shanghai, and Data Centre Dynamics 2013.

Big cloud data centre players like Google and Facebook that set up shop in Malaysia, would be seen as huge endorsement of Malaysia’s capability, competency and status as a preferred regional data centre hub.