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PDG, Equinix tap booming APAC datacentre market
Major datacentre providers are expanding their footprint in a region that is set to become the biggest datacentre market by 2020
Fresh from buying a majority stake in XL Axiata’s datacentre portfolio in Indonesia, Singapore-based Princeton Digital Group (PDG) has acquired assets and land for new datacentres in China and Singapore.
The move is part of a $500m investment that the supplier of internet infrastructure has made to expand its footprint in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
In China, PDG – backed by global private equity firm Warburg Pincus – has started constructing a 40MW datacentre facility in Shanghai, with the first phase to be completed in the first half of 2020.
PDG has also acquired land for large-scale datacentres in Nanjing, Nantong and Wuxi – strategic locations of growth in China. In Singapore, PDG said it has also acquired a 100% stake in a datacentre business that used to be part of IO Data Centres, a major US datacentre operator.
“Our Shanghai project will be one of the largest datacentre campuses in the region and marks an exciting phase for PDG in China as we consolidate our assets and invest further for growth,” said PDG chairman and CEO Rangu Salgame.
“In Singapore, the acquisition gives our customers a compelling solution to their scalability needs in the region’s digital hub. These transactions represent a significant step towards building a pan-Asian multibillion-dollar digital infrastructure portfolio,” he said.
APAC is poised to become the biggest datacentre market by 2020. According to JLL, APAC revenues for shared or co-location datacentres is expected to overtake that of the US, rising to 40% of global share by 2020.
Read more about datacentres in APAC
- More edge datacentres will be needed in the Asia-Pacific region to cope with greater adoption of edge computing and IoT when 5G networks are up and running.
- Facebook is building its first Asian datacentre in Singapore, underscoring the social media giant’s growing footprint across the region.
- Colt is planning to launch its own datacentre facilities in India and Singapore in a bid to expand its growing footprint across the APAC region.
- Huawei and Keppel are testing the use of artificial intelligence to improve datacentre operations and energy efficiency at a reference site in Singapore.
China’s datacentre market alone is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of close to 12% from 2018 to 2022, while the Southeast Asian market is set to grow at 14% from 2017 to 2021.
Much of the growth in datacentre capacity in APAC is driven by the region’s growing digital economies. By 2022, APAC will account for over half of the world’s mobile traffic, which will be further bolstered by the arrival of 5G mobile services.
In August 2019, Equinix opened a new datacentre in Seoul to fuel South Korea’s growing demand for cloud services and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and the internet of things (IoT).
The datacentre comes at a time when South Korea is cementing its leadership as one of the most vibrant digital economies in the world.
South Korea’s fourth industrial revolution response plan, launched in 2017, outlined the roll-out of next-generation infrastructure, such as the national 5G network, and the creation of new industries around blockchain and the IoT.
“Our market entry into South Korea is yet another key milestone in our ongoing plans to expand Equinix in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region,” said Jeremy Deutsch, president of Equinix APAC.
“As economies in the region continue to evolve in the digital era, we want to be in every critical market – such as South Korea – to provide always-on, distributed IT infrastructure and interconnection services to support the digital transformation taking place.”
