
Data hall at one of STT GDC's data centre facilities.
ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) has revealed plans to construct their largest data centre facility to date in Singapore and their seventh locally, which is due for completion by mid-2020.
The STT Loyang facility at Loyang Way in Singapore is expected to cost is excess of an estimated $350 million with the construction of the five story facility expected to begin in early 2019 and be completed by mid-2020.
The facility will span a gross floor area (GFA) of over 290,000 square feet and a net lettable area (NLA) of 107,000 square feet.
Furthermore, it has been designed to meet Singapore’s BCA-IMDA Green Mark Platinum sustainability benchmark and boasts an IT load capacity of over 30MW.
“The exponential growth of cloud providers in this region, coupled with increasing digital transformation efforts amongst enterprises will drive demand for data centre (DC) storage and compute capacity in Singapore and across the Asia Pacific region in the coming years,” said Clement Goh, Southeast Asia CEO at STT GDC.
“STT Loyang will enable us to meet the increasing demand for capacity, while tapping on to the latest technologies and sustainable design features to ensure a low carbon footprint and optimal energy efficiency."
It is expected that public cloud spending across the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan, will reach an estimated US$15.08 billion before the end of 2018, according to IDC, representing a year-on-year increase of 35.66 per cent over 2017.
Furthermore, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for cloud spending in the region between 2016 to 2021 is forecast to hit 32.58 per cent.
Singapore has become the regions de facto data centre hub in recent years, attracting some of the world’s largest organisations to its shores, including the $1.4 billion investment by Facebook to build their first data centre in Asia, which is expected to be completed by 2022, while Google plans on investing an additional US$350 million on the construction of their third Singapore data centre, bringing their total investment in Singapore to US$850 million.
While Singapore’s low tax environment has made the city-state attractive for large corporations it is not the only reason why organisations choose Singapore to expand their operations, other key factors include its strong network infrastructure, diverse connectivity to major APAC markets and its pro-business environment as well its political stability.
Furthermore, In July 2018, STT GDC announced it had entered into a partnership with Singapore Internet Exchange (SGIX) to launch a SGIX point-of-presence (PoP) in the co-location facility, STT Tai Seng 1.
This partnership brings a number of key benefits for customers of STT GDC including improved traffic routing performance and reduced internet traffic exchange costs to SGIX’s members, which include global carriers, internet service providers, content and social networking services, gaming and technology companies, and content delivery networks.
SGIX’s services are thus available to the data centre providers customers across its existing six data centres in Singapore and the upcoming STT Loyang facility.
Design
Built to meet Singapore’s BCA-IMDA Green Mark Platinum sustainability benchmark, the STT Loyang facility leverage the latest power usage effectiveness (PUE) standards as well as sustainable features such as high-efficiency chillers, reduced water consumption through intelligent design, and energy-efficient uninterruptible power supplies (UPS).
As a Tier 3 data centre it will be fitted with redundant and dual-powered servers, storage, network links and other IT components, providing high levels of redundancy in terms of power, storage, compute and network capacity to ensure smooth operations in the event of any unforeseen circumstances.
Furthermore, the facility will also be Threat Vulnerability Risk Assessment (TVRA)-certified offering a highly secure operational environment.
The Singapore-headquartered data centre provider has over 70 facilities to date across Singapore, China, India, Thailand and the UK.