Take a sneak peek at Equinix’s $300m international business exchange data centre in Singapore

Which took almost a decade to finish.

Equinix, a global interconnection and data center company, launched its third International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Singapore called SG3. With an initial investment of $53M, the opening of SG3 brings the total investment in Singapore to date to over $300M.

The seven-storey purpose-built flagship data center is built as Equinix’s largest center in Asia-Pacific and aims to demonstrate the company’s ongoing commitment to the growing market demand for premium data center services from financial and cloud companies in the region.

SG3 boasts of a gross floor area of approximately 385,000 sq ft. which can accommodate approximately 5,000 cabinets at full build, of which 1,000 will be available in the first phase. According to Clement Goh, managing director of Equinix South Asia, they believe that as the company expands its global footprint in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region, SG3 will create possibilities for innovation and business expansion via access to an unmatched ecosystem of partners and customers through high performance interconnections.

“The recent change in the data privacy law has given local data center demand a boost. With the increase in mobile penetration and population, the market will likely evolve into something “bigger and more interesting” over time,” said Clement.

Clement added that the data center has morphed from “back office” significance to a mission-critical tool that can help organizations increase their speed to market. Latency is therefore a key concern to businesses and maintaining a robust IT infrastructure is all the more important, he said.

Equinix = Interconnectivity

As a data center company, Equinix’s crux of business is ‘Interconnectivity’, and they made sure that the new IBX data center will offer new paths in and out of the world’s largest financial centers. According to Clement, the new IBX data center will enable collaboration, innovation and business acceleration opportunities. SG3 is interconnected to SG1 and SG2.

“SG3 and SG1 data centers are interconnected through a dedicated fiber network, allowing customers in SG1 to expand their business within the Equinix platform. Direct tethering to SG1, which is the country’s most network-dense data center, will enable customers in SG3 to interconnect with low latency, as if they were in the same location. Completing the cycle, SG3 is also connected in the same vein to the cloud hub, SG2. With the interconnectivity across SG3, SG1, and SG2, businesses have access to a strong connection of networks,” he explained.

Admitting that Equinix also consume a lot of power, the company has pledged to adopt sustainable technologies. In an effort to minimize its energy consumption, SG3 was designed to operate in an energy-efficient way. Clement adds that the new building uses solar panels to capitalize Singapore’s abundant supply of sunlight as an alternative energy source.

Recently, SG3 was presented the Platinum Award under the Building and Construction Authority – Infocomm Development Authority (“BCA-IDA”) Green Mark scheme for Data Centers.

While Equinix has a lot of things to boast of, Clement said that acquiring the plot of land gave them a hard time to surpass. It took them nine years to secure which made it the biggest obstacle to make SG3 possible.

“We wanted SG3 to be near SG1, close to the network, to continue to build on our strong eco-system. We identified the current space within close radius of SG1. However, when we were allocated the land, it was still occupied by a 4-storey low-rise facility whose last tenant held a lease till 2017,” said Clement.

From the time they submitted their business case to the Economic Development Board (EDB) and Jurong Town Council (JTC) back in 2007 till now, Clement said that both the EDB and JTC underwent management changes, and the teams working with them on the project also underwent changes.

Recently, Equinix announced that it will open five new data centers on four continents in the coming weeks to create more capacity for global companies to connect to their partners, customers and employees.

Singapore Business Review seeks out for new innovation centres and R&D labaratories in Singapore. Send a message to Lee Anne at [email protected] for possible feature.