Singapore is among the prime ultimate markets for knowledge centres throughout the globe, current stories confirmed.
The Arcadis Knowledge Centre Location Index 2021 ranked Singapore the second most tasty metropolis to construct knowledge centres, out of fifty cities.
In the meantime, Cushman & Wakefield’s 2021 International Knowledge Centre Market Comparability report ranked Singapore’s knowledge centre market fifth out of 48 markets – up one spot from a 12 months in the past.
In Arcadis’ report, Singapore was recognised for its skill to draw main investments from the expertise trade, due to a well-educated workforce and steady authorities, making it a “pure co-location hub for serving markets throughout South-east Asia and India”.
Whereas challenges that Singapore faces embrace the supply of renewable power sources and land shortage, Mr Richard Warburton, Arcadis’ shopper improvement director in Singapore, highlighted options which might be at the moment being evaluated available in the market, akin to floating and submersed knowledge centres.
Different options embrace the usage of photovoltaic installations, in addition to chilly power launch from liquefied pure gasoline and hydrogen cells for on-site energy technology.
“The flexibility to implement sturdy renewable power options will likely be key to Singapore sustaining its regional hub place and to satisfy the continued surge in demand,” mentioned Mr Warburton. He added that on prime of renewable power options, decreasing the precise power consumption of knowledge centres may also be key.
Clinching a rating of 76.86 out of 100 factors – coming in simply behind the US with 77.86 factors – Singapore additionally ranked effectively in areas akin to the worth of electrical energy, world cyber safety and imply obtain pace.
Nevertheless it scored comparatively poorly on power safety and home market dimension, making it “closely reliant on good relations with its neighbours”.
Arcadis’ index ranks 50 of the world’s key established and rising markets primarily based on their efficiency throughout eight standards: gross home product per capita, coping with development permits, worth of electrical energy, power safety, cyber safety, home market dimension, the variety of cell broadband subscriptions and imply obtain pace.
The ultimate index worth is a sum of weighted scores collated from publicly accessible sources, which had been then normalised on a scale of 0 to 100 primarily based on World Financial institution methodology.
Mr Dave Fanning, government managing director and knowledge centre advisory group chief at Cushman & Wakefield, famous that regardless of the continued native moratorium imposed by the Singapore Authorities, the market’s present presence, dense fibre and array of obtainable providers proceed to make it a gorgeous knowledge centre vacation spot.
The Enterprise Occasions earlier reported {that a} moratorium on establishing new knowledge centres was “implicitly imposed” from early 2019.
Cushman & Wakefield’s research evaluated 1,189 knowledge centres in 48 world markets, scoring every knowledge centre throughout 13 weighted standards in three classes: actual property and bodily issues, ecosystem benefits, and political and regulatory overview. Every metropolitan space was then assigned an total market rating.
Beneath the true property and bodily issues class, Singapore emerged prime 10 among the many improvement pipeline and absence of environmental threat standards.
For ecosystem benefits, it was recognised for providing entry to the three main world cloud providers (Amazon Net Providers, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud), and for having a big market dimension and a wise metropolis framework.
Lastly, below the political and regulatory overview class, Singapore was among the many prime 10 markets that supplied decrease taxes.
Throughout the area, Mr Todd Olson, Cushman & Wakefield’s Asia-Pacific knowledge centre advisory group chief, mentioned the Asia-Pacific knowledge centre market continues to carry out effectively as a knowledge centre vacation spot as a result of its total progress potential and the fast improvement of expertise platforms and networks throughout a lot of its markets.
Knowledge centre market progress is predicted to accentuate within the area, with secondary markets gaining prominence, he added.
However as different markets proceed to develop, Mr Fanning mentioned it’s nonetheless crucial for Singapore to seek out options for future improvement. This may very well be by new types of energy technology or additional multi-storey development for the restricted variety of remaining improvement websites.
THE BUSINESS TIMES