Artist impression of Equinix's SG4
Data centre and colocation provider Equinix has unveiled plans to construct its fourth data centre in Singapore, dubbed SG4 - investing US$85 million into the project.
Through the construction of the provider’s fourth International Business Exchange (IBX), Equinix will expand its interconnection and premium data centre services to local and regional businesses, capitalising on increased IT transformation and cloud adoption.
Specifically, the new seven-story facility is scheduled to open in Q4 2019, offering an initial capacity of 1,400 cabinets in the first phase, accommodating more than 4,000 cabinets upon completion.
The total colocation space is expected to be more than 132,180 square feet (approximately 12,280 square meters), with 45,400 square feet expected in the first phase.
“At the heart of digital business in Asia Pacific, Singapore is a crucial hub for many organisations in the region, generating skyrocketing demand for cloud and interconnection services,” said Samuel Lee, president at Equinix Asia Pacific.
“With interconnection accelerating across the Asia Pacific region, the new SG4 IBX data centre will create more opportunities for businesses, both locally and regionally, to interconnect with their customers, partners and stakeholders to achieve digital success, further enhancing the digital economies across Singapore and the region."
Equinix has continued to deepen its investments in Singapore to support the country’s Smart Nation plan, reflecting the company’s confidence in Singapore’s future as a digital hub in Asia.
Furthermore, according to the second volume of the Global Interconnection Index, a market study published by Equinix, Singapore’s Interconnection Bandwidth capacity – a measurement of direct and private data exchange between businesses – is expected to more than quadruple by 2021, reaching 394 Tbps at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47 per cent.
“In Asia Pacific, Equinix has been investing significantly in provisioning effective interconnection solutions for enterprises, enabling them to deploy a distributed IT infrastructure at the edge and privately connect with the centralised IT core,” said Nishchal Khorana, director of digital transformation practice at Frost & Sullivan.
“With the expansion in Singapore, Equinix’s presence in the region is becoming even more significant as it pushes its footprint beyond regional hubs to national edge metros."
The new facility will be strategically situated at the East of Singapore in one of the country’s five data centre clusters – Tai Seng Industrial Estate – providing location diversity from the three existing Equinix IBX data centres in Singapore. The facility is owned by Mapletree Industrial Trust (MIT), a Singapore-listed industrial real estate investment trust.
“We are very pleased that Equinix has once again selected Mapletree to support its growth as it continues to expand its presence in Singapore and the region,” said Tham Kuo Wei, CEO at Mapletree Industrial Trust Management, the manager of MIT.
“This project is a reflection of Equinix’s trust and confidence in our ability to deliver customised industrial real estate solutions in the fast-growing data centre sector."
Specifically, SG4 will be directly connected to the three existing Equinix IBX data centres in Singapore via low-latency dark fibre links, enabling customers to securely interconnect with approximately 600 companies from different industries, including financial services, cloud services, biomedical sciences, IT, communications, media, physical sciences and engineering.
This also includes a broad range of network services from more than 200 global networks and more than 150 cloud and IT service providers.
The existing three Equinix IBX data centres in Singapore comprise more than 445,000 square feet (approximately 41,400 square meters) of colocation space.
The Equinix SG1 IBX data centre is BCA-IDA Green Mark certified, while the SG2 and SG3 IBX data centres have received the GoldPLUS and Platinum awards, respectively, for their clean and renewable energy credentials.
Furthermore, the planned SG4 facility will also provide software-defined interconnection through the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) to more than 1,300 businesses including some of the largest cloud service providers (CSP) among them Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud and Tencent Cloud.
Customers can use the ECX Fabric APIs or portal to find and connect to the aggregation of companies and ecosystems at Equinix on demand, locally or in other metro areas.
This includes on-demand connectivity to ECX Fabric customers globally and in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia (Sydney, Melbourne and Perth), Hong Kong and Japan (Tokyo and Osaka).
Currently, the global footprint of Platform Equinix spans 200 IBX data centres across 52 markets and 24 countries, providing data centre and interconnection services for more than 9,800 businesses, globally.
In Asia Pacific, Equinix has 40 IBX data centres across key markets including Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan and Singapore.
