Digital Realty Launches Second Singapore Data Center update from June 2016

Digital Realty Trust has launched its second data center in Singapore, one of Asia’s most important data center markets.

The data center, called Digital Loyang Way, is located on the east edge of the island and will be connected to Digital’s Jurong data center on the west side -- where Facebook is a customer -- by dedicated fiber links and links operated and used by multiple service providers. It will provide network access to top global carriers and the Singapore Internet Exchange.

The nearly 180,000-square foot facility can support more than 13MW of IT load, the company said in a statement issued this week.

Digital is bringing capacity online in a relatively small but high-demand data center market, where it is faced with growing competition. Just last month, local telco Singapore Technologies Telemedia agreed to acquire a majority stake in the Singapore and India data center business of the Indian giant Tata Communications, giving it control of three data centers in Singapore and 14 in India.

ST Telemedia has global data center services ambitions, which it started to execute on in Singapore last year by kicking off construction of a 150,000-square foot facility on the island and then buying a majority stake in a company behind another big data center construction project in Singapore called MediaHub.

The size of Singapore’s data center market was close to $1 billion in 2014, according to analysts at Structure Research. The firm expects it to surpass $1.2 billion this year, driven by its status as a major network interconnection hub for the entire Asia Pacific region and one of two key network gateways to mainland China. The other one is Hong Kong.

By Structure’s estimates, Singtel, another Singapore telco, was the biggest data center provider on the island, followed by Equinix, which is both a competitor and a major customer of Digital’s. Other top players are Global Switch and Keppel.

Read more: Why the Singapore Data Center Market is Booming