Strong demand, Malaysia becomes Asia’s data center powerhouse | Wilnesh News

As demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence surges, Malaysia is becoming a data center powerhouse in Southeast Asia and across the African continent.

In recent years, the country Attracting billions of dollars in data center investmentincluding those of technology giants Google, Nvidia and Microsoft.

James Murphy, Asia Pacific managing director of data center intelligence company DC Byte, said most of the investment is concentrated in the small city of Johor Bahru, which borders Singapore.

“It looks like within a few years, (Johor Bahru) will overtake Singapore from a base of essentially zero two years ago to become Southeast Asia’s largest market,” he said.

Johor Bahru named fastest growing market in Southeast Asia DC Byte Global Data Center Index 2024.

The city’s total data center supply is 1.6 gigawatts, including projects under construction, committed or in the early stages of planning, the report said. Data center capacity is usually measured by the power it consumes.

If all planning capacity in Asia comes online, Malaysia will only be overtaken by major countries such as Japan and India. Prior to this, Japan and Singapore currently lead the region in terms of real-time data center capacity.

The index does not provide a detailed breakdown of data center capacity in China.

However, the global pandemic has accelerated the world’s digital transformation and cloud adoption, leading to a surge in demand for cloud providers in emerging markets such as Malaysia and India. Report from global data center provider EdgeConneX.

“The increasing demand for video streaming, data storage and anything done over the internet or over the phone essentially means that the demand for data centers will increase,” Murphy said.

The growing demand for AI services also requires dedicated data centers to accommodate the large amounts of data and computing power required to train and deploy AI models.

Murphy said that while many AI data centers will be built in mature markets such as Japan, emerging markets will also attract investment because of their favorable characteristics.

AI data centers require large amounts of space, energy, and water to cool. As a result, emerging markets such as Malaysia (where energy and land are cheap) have an advantage over small city-states with limited resources, such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

As a result, significant investments and planned capacity have been transferred from Singapore to neighboring Johor Bahru over the years.

Singapore has recently changed its attitude A roadmap was developed to increase data center capacity by 300 megawatts, provided more projects meet green-friendly efficiency and renewable energy standards. These efforts have attracted investments from the likes of Microsoft and Google.

Kenanga Investment Bank research estimates that potential power demand for data centers in Malaysia will Total demand will reach 5 GW by 2035. this Current device capacity According to Malaysian power company Bahan Nasional Berhad, the installation capacity across Malaysia is approximately 27 GW.

As one report quotes, local officials are increasingly concerned about the extent of this power use. Latest reports from The Straits Times.

Johor Bahru City Council Mayor Mohd Noorazam Osman reportedly said data center investments should not compromise local resource needs given the challenges the city faces in water and power supply.

Meanwhile, an official from the Johor Investment, Trade and Consumer Affairs Commission told ST that the state government will implement more guidelines on the use of green energy in data centers in June.