The Middle East data centre market has been in the news recently, with plans announced for a massive new data centre in Cairo and the arrival of a new report suggesting impressive growth expected for Oman’s data centre sector.
The digital solutions provider Benya Group has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the UAE-based wholesale data centre provider Khazna Data Centres to build a 25-megawatt (MW) hyperscale data centre at Maadi Technology Park in Cairo, Egypt’s first specialized investment zone, with US$250 million in investments, according to the country’s General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI).
Described as a first for in Egypt in terms of capacity and size, the project will be built in a 40,000-square metre area.
The project comes within the framework of the country’s plan to localize information technology and data centre industries amid the ongoing development in Egypt’s infrastructure sector.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, a new research report from Arizton Advisory and Intelligence, a global cloud and data centre advisory firm, puts the size of Oman’s data centre market at US$247 million in 2022 and suggests it will reach US$428 million by 2028.
The report suggests the sultanate’s data centre market is being driven by a rise in cloud service adoption, significant growth in digitisation, increasing submarine cable connectivity, and the adoption of technologies such as big data, IoT, and artificial intelligence.
The increasing demand for migration to cloud platforms by various sectors is attracting local and global cloud service providers into Oman’s data centre market, including big names such as AWS, Microsoft, Oracle and Google.
The Oman data centre market includes local and global operators such as Equinix, Ooredoo, Datamount, Cloud Acropolis and Oman Data Park. Its growth potential is led by Muscat, though other cities such as Barka, Salalah and Sohar have seen data centre investments.
