Data Centres & Networks

Qatar-based Ooredoo Group announced on Tuesday it has signed a QAR 2 billion (US$549.4 million) financing deal to help fund its plan to accelerate its data centre business and establish itself as an AI infrastructure heavyweight in the MENA region.

Data centre provider Princeton Digital Group (PDG), a major player in the Asian market, says it has acquired powered land for 500MW capacity expansion in key markets across Asia.

African cloud services provider ST Digital has announced its expansion into the Democratic Republic of Congo through a partnership with the Open Access Data Centres (OADC) Texaf – Kinshasa data centre, the Democratic Republic of Congo's first live open-access, carrier-neutral and Uptime Institute Tier-III certified data centre.

Aramco Digital Company and Groq, a major name in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) inference, have announced a partnership to establish the world's largest inferencing data centre in Saudi Arabia. But it's far from the only recent AI news from the digital and technology subsidiary of Aramco, the giant global integrated energy and chemicals company.

The Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul and Scala Data Centers, a leading Latin American platform of sustainable data centres in the hyperscale market, have signed a letter of intent to enable the construction of what they call the largest and most innovative digital infrastructure project in South America.

Orange Business announced the completion of a connectivity project with healthcare company Grifols Egypt to improve the supply and delivery of medicine.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) announced on Friday that it will invest US$3.2 billion to expand its data centre capacity in India by 550MW, nearly tripling its IT load capacity to meet the demands of India’s digital economy over the next five to six years.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant has been a highly influential metric in the technology sector for over ten years. As an ostensibly objective analysis of market competitors, the majority of businesses factor it into their decision-making, so its impact on the sector’s competitive landscape is evident.

Philippine data centre developer and operator A-FLOW – the JV partnership between PAG-owned FLOW Digital Infrastructure and AyalaLand Logistics (ALLHC) – announced on Thursday that it has topped off its first data center in Biñan, Laguna.

Google announced on Thursday it will invest US$850 million in its long-planned Terros data centre in Canelones, Uruguay, a month after convincing the government that the facility won’t exacerbate the country’s water shortage due to drought.

Reliance Jio’s parent company, Reliance Industries Limited, is reportedly planning to build AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar as part of the company’s overall strategy of “democratising” access to AI infrastructure.

Hong Kong-based global ICT service provider and network operator HGC Global Communications (HGC) announced on Wednesday that it has launched a data centre interconnect (DCI) solution in Bangkok.

BDx Indonesia has announced the launch of the first phase of its interconnected internet exchange (IX) ecosystem in Indonesia.

A second big data centre story this month has come from the Democratic Republic of Congo as it inaugurates a US$30 million data centre from Raxio Group, said to be Africa’s leading carrier-neutral Tier III data centre operator.

Blue NAP Americas, which provides businesses with data centre services, and Zella DC, an Australian company that manufactures micro data centres, have entered into a strategic partnership that initiates a reseller programme, enabling Blue NAP Americas to offer Zella DC's hybrid data centre solutions throughout the Caribbean.

PLDT chairman and CEO Manuel Pangilinan said a deal is on the boil for a 49% stake in the operator group’s data centre business, despite negotiations with Japan-based Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) collapsing.

The first phase of OADC Texaf Digital, a joint venture between African data centre company Open Access Data Centres (OADC) and TEXAF, a major long-term investor in the economy of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is now live in Kinshasa in the DRC.

A number of news outlets in India are suggesting that cloud services provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) is looking to expand its data centre presence in Hyderabad, India, where it already has facilities that include three big data centres and its largest corporate building globally.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) said on Thursday that its data centre in Jakarta will host a new node for the Indonesia Internet Exchange (IIX) under a new partnership with the Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association (APJII).

Global data centre company Vantage Data Centres officially broke ground on its second Malaysian data centre in Cyberjaya on Tuesday, whilst also signing a deal with electricity company TNB to power it.

Indonesia's state-owned service provider Telkom Indonesia, the country’s largest telecommunication group, is widely reported to have appointed leading global investment banking, securities, and asset and wealth management firm Goldman Sachs and local investment bank Mandiri Sekuritas to help it find a strategic investor for its data centre business NeutraDC.

Singapore-based data centre provider ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) says it has signed a deal to use Malaysian telco U Mobile’s 5G connectivity to help its new data centres in Malaysia better support edge applications.

ArtificiaI intelligence (AI)-ready data centres are in the news this week, with Malaysia and Indonesia playing host to new or planned facilities.

Google’s application for its Teros data centre project in the Parque de las Ciencias free trade zone in the Canelones department in the south of Uruguay has now been approved by the country’s Environment Ministry.

Digital infrastructure giant Equinix has announced yet another deal in Asia. This one is an estimated US$5 million investment to acquire land from former landowner and now tech hub developer Cyberview in ICT-focused city Cyberjaya in Selangor state.

East African carrier-neutral data centre operator Wingu Africa, and Gebeya, a pan-African company that specializes in SaaS-enabled custom talent cloud innovation, have announced the launch of what they call a groundbreaking ‘talent cloud solution’ aimed at developing human capital for the data centre industry in East Africa. 

Digital infrastructure company Equinix has announced its planned entry into the Philippines with the acquisition of three data centres from Total Information Management (TIM), a technology solutions provider.

Nairobi-based IXAfrica Data Centres and Schneider Electric have launched what they say is the first AI-ready hyperscale data centre in Kenya, and the largest such data centre in all of East Africa.

The second Mexican data centre from Brazilian company Odata, a provider of data centre services for Latin America that is controlled by US group Aligned Data Centres, has been reported as having started operations.

With Vietnam's rules on storing data locally causing a surge in demand, local data centre operators are apparently unable to cope. Thus Vietnam has decided that foreign investors can now own data centres in the country.

Vietnamese ICT company CMC Corporation has launched a data centre subsidiary. The new company – CMC AI Digital Infrastructure, or CMC ADI –will be constructing and operating hyperscale data centres.

TelCables South Africa, which offers a range of secure connectivity solutions to the Southern African market, says it has upgraded its backbone network infrastructure to accommodate the rapidly growing data traffic across its network and to provide faster, more secure connectivity.