MANILA - Globe, Ayala Corp and Singapore-based ST Telemedia Global Data Centres are building what they say will be the largest data center in the Philippines.
The groundbreaking ceremony was done Thursday in Fairview, Quezon City. The new data center will have 83,000 square meters of gross floor area and offers a development potential of 124 megawatts of IT load capacity. The 124 megawatts is way above the current combined capacity in the Philippines of about 60 megawatts total.
Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, Chairman of Ayala Corporation, said he is happy with Globe's expansion of its telco business.
“Nothing can be done alone and it’s a great group of partners that we have on something massively important,” said Zobel de Ayala.
Bruno Lopez, President and CEO of STT GDC said the initial investment would be around $1 million, and it is expected to beef up the economy and create jobs.
“The flow over effect of that investment, as mentioned there was this Oxford Economics study every 20 megawatts that is built delivers close to $5 billion GDP boost, as well as 28,000- 30,000 jobs,” said Lopez.
Many companies like Globe’s rival Smart and Converge are also building data centers in the country. Data centers are facilities that house or store data of various websites, social media sites, mobile applications and more.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology welcomes the building of data centers and its head, Sec. Ivan John Uy, expects it to be one of the new drivers of economic growth.
“It’s going to be a rapidly growing segment of the business with the hyperscalers looking at locating here, we will be potentially hosting the cloud services of the rest of ASEAN,” said Uy.