With the rising affluence and increasingly tech-savvy young population in Southeast Asia, the region’s internet economy is expected to expand expeditiously. Research findings by Cushman & Wakefield and Structure Research project data centre growth in Southeast Asia to be spurred by the rapid pace of digitisation, giving rise to a surge in demand for cloud-based services. This has prompted big corporations to expand their cloud infrastructure footprint to facilitate the expansion, which created much opportunities for data centre players.
The rising demand for data storage in Southeast Asia holds significant potential commercial upside for data centre players. Southeast Asia is anticipated to be the fastest growing region for data centres, expanding by a compounded annual growth rate of 13 per cent between 2019 and 2024. However, the lack of fully developed infrastructure in many of the emerging markets in the region poses much challenges for data centre players.
Despite there is much room for improvement in infrastructure, the investment potential of data centre far outweighs the teething issues. The limited supply of data centre across the region also means that demand will remain keen.