Jabez Tan on high-rise data centres in Singapore

• July 31, 2017

Source: Data Center Dynamics

The initiative makes sense when viewed not as a reaction to soaring land costs, but as an attempt to maintain Singapore’s edge in the long term. Jabez Tan, a research director specializing in data centers at Structure Research says there is still “plenty of space” for new data centers at the (recently renamed) Tanjong Kling in Jurong West.

“The [announcement] is not necessarily a reactive sign that there’s an immediate shortage of land for data center builds, but more of a proactive step in working towards a longer-term plan to maximize the limited land in Singapore to accommodate enough data center capacity to support Singapore’s long-term growth,” he said to DCD.

If anything, competition from the region is increasing, according to Tan who brought up the possibility of large public cloud players locating their compute infrastructure to adjacent markets “with more readily available land” such as neighboring Malaysia.