Pacnet to shake up Asia Pacific data centre market

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 24 February 2010 13:30

Business IT - Networking

Regional submarine cable network operator, Pacnet, looks set to become a major force in the data centre market with the announcement of plans to upgrade its submarine cable network landing stations into data centres.

The company owns and operates cable landing stations in key markets across Asia including Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. It plans to upgrade three of these to into what it calls 'data landing stations' (DLS) in 2010 and more in 2011. It says details of Phase One upgrades will be announced in the coming weeks.

Pacnet claims to be uniquely well placed to enter this market where incumbents and other would-be entrants face a number of hurdles. Pacnet CEO, Bill Barney, said: "Over the past few years, we have seen exponential growth in the demand for data centre hosting services and customised applications. Yet, the cost of power, real estate, maintenance and connectivity makes it challenging for existing players to upgrade and for new players to enter into the data centre space.

"Pacnet's cable landing facilities across Asia are equipped with massive power, space and capacity, therefore, it is a natural step for us to move forward in building DLS facilities to support immediate demands in the marketplace."

He added "Pacnet is in a unique position to leverage our own cable landing facilities towards building a network of terabit data transport and hosting centres next to our subsea fibre infrastructure which will enable us to offer the fastest data and content transmission available in the region."

According to a recent report by Frost & Sullivan, the data centre co-location and managed hosting services market in Asia Pacific has been going strong for almost a decade, growing in tandem with the rise in business and Internet subscribers.

"The data centre services sector is expected to continue to see promising demand over the next couple of years," said Jayesh Easwaramony, research director at Frost & Sullivan, "Power costs can often account for more than 50 percent of the overall operational expenditure, while real estate pricing could also seriously inflate costs."