APAC Data Centre Update: H2 2024

SINGAPORE

ASIA PACIFIC PRIMARY MARKET

Colo Hyperscale Cloud Telco

KEY INDICATORS*

LOYANG

1,016MW In Operation

26 / 53 Operators / Data Centres

BEDOK TAMPINES

PAYA LEBAR

SUNVIEW - JURONG

28MW / 216MW UC / Planned

2% Colo Vacancy

MARKET OVERVIEW Singapore became the fifth market in the Asia Pacific region to surpass the 1,000MW operational capacity milestone. Despite significant restriction on power allocations for new data centre builds, the market saw 31MW of new supply added during the year, pushing it past this threshold. With a vacancy rate of just 2%—the lowest in the Asia Pacific region—Singapore continues to solidify its position as a key data centre hub for end-users. In collaboration with the Malaysian government, the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ) was officially launched to drive economic growth in the region. Among its key focus areas, the digital economy has been identified as a major growth sector. The SEZ is expected to offer tax incentives and facilitate seamless cross-border movement of people and goods between the two countries. Such factors provide a conducive environment for data centre operations, leveraging the synergies between Malaysia and Singapore to support long-term industry expansion. The Singapore government announced plans to release 300MW of power allocations under the Green Data Centre Roadmap (GDCR) in May 2024. However, the official release date remains uncertain. In anticipation, operators are actively preparing their bid strategies, focusing on renewable energy sourcing, sustainability measures, and efficient building designs that optimize power and water usage. Some have formed strategic collaborations and consortiums to strengthen their bids. Interest from operators and investors for the GDCR power allocation is expected to be significantly higher than during the Data Centre Call for Application (DC-CFA), with several new entrants vying for allocations. Following the award of power allocations via the DC-CFA, Equinix has become the first operator to begin construction on its 20MW data centre. According to media reports, the facility will be designed to support AI workloads, span nine floors, and is expected to be ready for service (RFS) by the first quarter of 2027.

ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENTS • China Mobile inaugurated the Peace subsea cable that connects Singapore and France. It is China Mobile’s third cable that connects 12 countries across Asia and Europe and has 13 landing stations. • Equinix signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Sembcorp Power to source 58.5MW of solar power in Singapore. The solar energy will be delivered from a solar installation spread over 60ha of land and the rooftops of five JTC Corporation buildings. The power generation from these solar installations is scheduled to start in 2029. • Micron has planned to invest US$7B over a five-year period to manufacture memory chips to meet the rapidly growing demand driven by AI adoption. • Nxera , a subsidiary of Singtel, disclosed its plans to phase out five of its legacy data centres as it focuses on sustainability. The existing customers from these data centres would be relocated to Nxera’s new data centre in Tuas that’s proposed to offer one of the lowest PUEs in the region. • Oracle has launched its second cloud region in Singapore, which it announced back in 2023. • The Singapore government has committed US$204M toward the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) to strengthen and upgrade its supercomputing infrastructure. The funds shall be used for the development of Super computers that are scheduled to get operational by the second half of 2025. • Singtel signed a deal with GMI Cloud signed a deal with GMI Cloud for its GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) offering. GMI GPU’s platform would be integrated with Singtel's Paragon platform to enable access to Nvidia H100 GPUs in Singapore. Singtel has signed similar agreements for GPUaaS with Nscale, Bridge Alliance, and Vultr in the past.

CUSHMAN & WAKEFIELD | ASIA PACIFIC DATA CENTRE MARKET OVERVIEW