Malaysia leads Southeast Asian peers in regional data center ranking

It outperformed regional peers in the consultancy’s SEA-5 Data Centre Opportunity Index thanks to its annual take-up of 429 megawatts (MW), robust infrastructure, strategic investments, and forward-looking policies, Malaysian state news agency Bernama reported.

The index compares five countries, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines, based on key data center factors, including recent take-up and supply figures, and other elements like population size, GDP growth, and the ease of doing business for foreign investors.

Knight Frank Malaysia said Malaysia welcomed RM141.72 billion (US$31.58 billion) in digital investments during the first 10 months of this year, three times the total figure for 2023.

This includes strategic investments in artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure totaling $23.3 billion made by tech giants such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, ByteDance, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle.

"The synergy between public initiatives and private innovation positions Malaysia as a magnet for industrial growth, unlocking vast opportunities for both local and global players in the years to come," The Star quoted Chelwin Soo, Knight Frank Malaysia’s director of land and industrial solutions, as saying.

Malaysia currently operates 54 data centers with a combined live IT capacity of 504.8 MW.

Among the SEA-5 countries, Indonesia ranked second with an annual take-up of 93 MW, followed by Thailand (31 MW), the Philippines (1 MW) and Vietnam (3 MW).

The SEA-5 data center market now has a total capacity of over 3 gigawatts, including both operational facilities and ongoing developments, a massive increase from 1.7 gigawatts in 2022.

In the past year, there has been notable growth in cloud regions within these countries, with Amazon Web Services expanding into Malaysia and Thailand, Oracle Cloud launching in Malaysia, and Microsoft announcing plans for a new data center region in Thailand.