Brian Groen, President of Vantage Data Centers in APAC spoke with Tech Wire Asia on how data centers infrastructure plays a key role for businesses.

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Data centers infrastructure holds the key to sustainability in the APAC region

  • By 2026, 25% of Internet users will spend at least an hour each day in the metaverse, according to recent Gartner report
  • Vantage is committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2030

Data centers are playing a more and bigger part in people’s lives as well as in corporate settings thanks to the rising relevance of cloud computing, 5G, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT). The infrastructure of data centers, which houses cloud service providers that provide these kinds of services, is crucial to this ecosystem.

There is no denying that when it comes to data centers, APAC is one of the global regions with the quickest rate of development. Research shows that the Asia Pacific colocation industry would expand at a predicted compound annual growth rate of 12.2% from 2018 to 2024.

The APAC data center industry is one that is worth paying special attention to due to its particular cultural and geographic variety, one-of-a-kind supply challenges, and significant potential for hyperscale expansion.

In light of this, Tech Wire Asia was able to chat with Brian Groen, President of Vantage Data Centers in APAC, about the forthcoming business challenges for the APAC region and how sustainability will be included into Vantage’s Data Centers.

What are the current trends around data centers?

Brian Groen, President of Vantage Data Centers in APAC

Brian Groen, President of Vantage Data Centers in APAC

According to Brian Groen, President of Vantage Data Centers in APAC, there are 3 trends that he sees. First, is becoming sustainable and socially responsible as the top focus. Data center providers put ESG strategies on top of agenda and investing in sustainable initiatives to accelerate their green journey.  For example, Vantage is investing in technologies that target reductions in emissions, starting with a focus on energy efficiency and emissions reductions from on-site generators. The public sector and large enterprises are also considered improving carbon footprint and overall energy efficiency as the top priorities.

Secondly, is the demand for cloud is anticipated to continue growing steadily. Hybrid and multi-cloud systems are becoming the standard for enterprises. He also sees that hyperscalers and cloud providers are growing in the 10%–30% CAGR range. In addition, this in turn will drive strong growth in data center demand & deployment.

Last but not least, is the emerging markets expansion continue – while JASH (Japan, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong) remains as tier 1 data center markets in the Asia-Pacific region, we also see strong momentum in ASEAN and India to support the shift in data center infrastructure from core to edge

What are some of the challenges that companies will potentially face when they transition to 5G data services?

Groen sees that more APAC countries have aggressive approach to data location and sovereignty. Power generation and distribution capacity is a common challenge in several APAC markets. Also, 5G services will help drive workloads to edge data centers and computing, the underlying infrastructure and technologies need to adapt to the needs of the workloads of the future

What about the metaverse? Given that the metaverse is going to demand a lot of computational power, what effect will it have on the development of data centers?

The IT infrastructure that powers the metaverse world will need major upgrades as data capacity and compute requirements grow exponentially from resource-intensive applications. The massive platform needs to be extensive across a number of physical locations, delivering ultra-low latency for a seamless user experience.

According to a recent Gartner report, 25% of Internet users will spend at least an hour every day on the metaverse by 2026. The increased adoption of metaverse will drive increase in power to service the large-scale computing needed. With this increased power brings the need for increased cooling and electrical efficiency

How will sustainability be factored into Vantage’s data centers?

Vantage is committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2030 – we invest in technologies and processes to design, build and operate our data centers as efficiently as possible. Our goal specifically targets reductions for emissions that we control, including Scope 1 and 2 emissions, as well as reductions that we guide or influence in our supply chain. We offer renewable energy options at all campuses in North America and EMEA. Also, we take a proactive approach in designing highly efficient data center campuses with industry-leading Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).

Tied into Vantage’s sustainability goals, our Cyberjaya campus, for example, achieves virtually zero Water Utilization Efficiency (WUE) by deploying the closed-loop chilling system that require no ongoing water source

Does Vantage Data Centers have a further plan to expand in other parts of the APAC region?

A combination of organic and acquisition led growth with a strong focus on supporting our core clients and their current and new market aspirations. Vantage has secured US $1.5 billion incremental equity to accelerate APAC expansion. Furthermore, Asia Pacific is a high growth region with hyperscale, cloud and large enterprises who need a global digital infrastructure platform like Vantage to expand their businesses.