Malaysia’s data centre gold rush continues as Telekom Malaysia (TM) and Nxera, the regional data centre arm of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo unit, announced that they have formed a joint venture to develop data centres in the country.
The first project under the new JV is a hyperscale AI-ready data centre campus in Johor. The data centre will initially support 64MW of capacity, and is designed to scale up to 200MW as demand increases. TM said the facility will be a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified green building.
TM said the data centre will be capable of supporting large computing and AI capabilities required by customers such as cloud hyperscalers and GPU-as-a-Service providers. It also features technologies like liquid cooling to efficiently handle high-power density workloads and operations.
TM said the campus location in Iskandar Puteri, which is 16 km from Singapore, gives it close access to TM and Digital InfraCo’s subsea cable links between Singapore and Malaysia, enabling it to support demand from both countries. The planned new campus will be the largest to date for both TM and Nxera.
The JV – which marks Nxera’s first move into the Malaysian market – will leverage Nxera’s regional data centre development expertise with TM’s extensive domestic network infrastructure and experience with offering wholesale data, connectivity, data centre and platform solutions, as well as the subsea capacity of both companies.
Customers of the new data centre in Johor will also be able to tap into services like Singtel’s Paragon cloud orchestration platform and upcoming GPU-as-a-Service, enabling them to orchestrate AI workloads in a multi-network and multi-cloud environment.
“TM brings the largest domestic network infrastructure, extensive international subsea cable systems and the largest interconnected DC in Malaysia, a solid backbone for this project,” said TM Group CEO Amar Huzaimi Md Deris in a statement. “This will serve as a catalyst for high performance computing and lay a solid foundation for the future advancement of cloud and AI applications.”
“With our joint industry expertise and strong track record, we will build and operate one of the most efficient, sustainable and connectivity-rich data centres in Malaysia,” said Bill Chang, CEO of Nxera and Digital InfraCo. “In addition to data centres, we will be expanding the submarine cable connectivity between Singapore and Johor to enhance digital connectivity. Our joint venture will also partner institutes of higher learning in Malaysia to nurture talent for our projects and the industry.”
Nxera is currently developing three new AI-ready data centres in Southeast Asia in addition to 62MW of existing capacity in Singapore. This includes a new 58MW data centre in Tuas, Singapore, and data centres with partners in Indonesia and Thailand. Nxera said its total pipeline capacity is set to increase to more than 200MW in the region in the next three years.
TM currently operates seven data centres across Malaysia, including two core data centres in Klang Valley and Johor. The operator said its participation in the Asia Link Cable Systems (ALC) subsea club cable – which links Hong Kong and Singapore, with branches connecting Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam and Hainan, China – will add another 24 Tbps of international capacity for its data centres in Johor when the cable goes live in the third quarter of next year.
Malaysia – like numerous other countries in Southeast Asia – has been aggressively pursuing demand for data centres in the region to support national digital transformation ambitions. DC Byte’s 2024 Global Data Centre Index names Johor Bahru as the fastest growing data centre market in the region.
The country has seen a blitz of new data centre projects in the past year alone. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Malaysia approved RM114.7 billion (US$24.3 billion) worth of investments in data centres and cloud services between 2021 and 2023.