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Singapore is third most robust data centre market in the world

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Singapore is the third most robust data centre market in the world and the most developed in South-east Asia, a report said yesterday.

It said the country jumped four spots from seventh place in 2017 to third, while retaining the top spot in the region.

The index identifies factors such as connectivity, ease of doing business, political stability, corporate tax rates, natural disasters, energy and security that are likely to affect data centre operations.

Singapore's rise in the index, compiled by property consultancy Cushman & Wakefield, was boosted by its improved high-speed connectivity, political stability and low risk of natural disasters.

"Being sheltered from natural disasters and robust infrastructure, many content operators continue to take advantage of Singapore's prime geographical location to service their regional clients in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand," the report noted.

Singapore has attracted a range of tech companies to set up data centres here, it added.

Facebook is investing about US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion) to build a centre slated to open in 2022. Equinix, Digital Realty, ST Telemedia and at least two other operators have secured land plots from JTC to build data centres, said the report.

Cushman & Wakefield estimated that the rapid pace of digitisation and a surge in demand for cloud-based services will make South-east Asia the fastest growing region for co-location data centres over the next five years.

North America is the largest co-location data centre by market size at US$17.2 billion, but the Asia-Pacific region is expected to take over the top position by as early as 2021.

Said Cushman & Wakefield head of research for South-east Asia Christine Li: "South-east Asia as a region offers many advantages for data centre players with a longer-term view. They will favour Singapore for its relative security to store mission critical data and store the business-as-usual non-mission critical data in the neighbouring countries." - THE STRAITS TIMES

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