Singapore is the most mature data center market in Southeast Asia, so it is imperative for new players like Princeton Digital Group to stand out in the country.
The ‘Little Red Dot’ is an ideal location to set up a data center, with the largest concentration of subsea cables in Asia, a stable political ecosystem and relatively safe from natural disasters.
Asher Ling, the Managing Director for Singapore at Princeton Digital Group, said: “There is a deep pool of talent with specific data center expertise and that the local ecosystem of partners is well established.”
Princeton Digital Group entered the market last year following their acquisition of the DCSG (previously called “IO Data Center”) facility in Central Singapore.
Acquiring the well-known data center in Singapore came with the challenge of tackling the preconceived notions and changing industry perceptions on what the facility had to offer.
Mr. Ling said: “Our strategy was to pivot such challenges into our advantage by leveraging on the market’s familiarity with our facility.”
Princeton Digital Group began by introducing services they believed were best suited and designed for their key target clients.
“We have been able to leverage our location, scale and the existing fiber infrastructure to help position our site to the hyperscaler community,” said Mr. Ling.
Hyperscaling Singapore
Hyperscalers have driven a lot of data center market growth in Singapore over the past several years, differentiating the country from others in Southeast Asia.
Overall, the hyperscale data center market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 24% until 2022 to keep up with rapid increase of data being generated by advancing technologies like AI and mobile devices as well as digitally transforming industries like banking, healthcare and public services.
Over the past year, Princeton Digital Group has worked with existing customers in Singapore to ensure their operational integrity, while concurrently investing to expand their SG1 facility to meet the requirements of both enterprise customers and hyperscale cloud service providers.
“Given our deep relationships across Asia Pacific, we have been able to establish client confidence in our Singapore business which has allowed us to move quickly and garner success in the marketplace,” said Mr. Ling.
And while other data center providers may consider cloud service providers as their competitors, Princeton Digital Group’s outlook is that they are an important customer base.
With a wide customer base, it is important to build a unique understanding of customers’ needs to stand out in the Singapore market, that’s why Princeton Digital Group has been focused on helping them address their infrastructure challenges.
Since acquiring DCSG in 2019, Princeton Digital Group ensured there would be no impact to existing operations as well as putting a growth strategy in place to provide a roadmap for additional capacity, serving both enterprise and hyperscale customers.
“We see very strong demand in the Singapore market, across all customer segments. We will continue to deliver services for our existing customers and build out new capacity to address our customer’s growth requirements,” assured Mr. Ling.
Princeton Digital Group recently completed a newly built out raised floor capacity at their SG1 facility and will continue their expansion projects to support new customer demand.
“We actively invested and built out our solutions to give confidence to prospective clients, which eventually led to our success in the Singapore market,” said Mr. Ling
Elsewhere, Princeton Digital Group is developing two new hyperscale greenfield builds in Indonesia that look to be ready by 2022.
Sustainably evolving Singapore
Singapore’s data center market continues to evolve in many aspects, with a prominent focus on how data center design and operations can support the sustainability goals of customers.
The ‘Little Red Dot’ consumes more electricity per person than any other country in Southeast Asia. Data centers contribute a substantial 7% of this energy consumption in Singapore every year.
In 2019, the Government started to impose a carbon tax at a rate of $5 for every tonne of greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the country’s environmental impact.
A Green Data Centre Standard has also been established with the aim of encouraging organisations to improve the energy efficiency of their facilities.
To remain financially competitive, environmentally responsible and provide unique selling points in the Singapore market, data centers operators are exploring many solutions to reduce their carbon footprint and ensure sustainability.
“We are working on both operational improvement and new design review programs in the areas of energy efficiency and technology platforms so that we can provide a consistent experience to all of our customers,” said Mr. Ling.
To achieve their sustainability goals, Princeton Digital Group is building up their team and putting operational programs in place to target increased energy efficiencies.
Singapore’s government is also proactively engaging with enterprise and colocation data center operators to address how the industry can develop and operate business in a sustainable manner.
Princeton Digital Group operates data centers across Asia Pacific and aligns their operations and construction processes to meet or exceed local regulations and building codes.
As published by W.Media.