Prospects heightened for data centre development

Chinese tech giant Alibaba last month revealed its plan to build a data centre in Vietnam to meet legal requirements for local data storage, and to meet increasing demand in one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies.

The country’s biggest telecoms groups getting involved in data centres have a massive slice of the market

The group said it is to rent a location to place servers in Vietnam, with its partners in the plan to be Viettel and VNPT, to store customer data locally. At the same time, data is also stored on Alibaba’s own servers in markets such as Taiwan and Singapore.

Data centre developments have been taking place at pace in recent times. Telecoms group Viettel in April opened its 14th data centre at the Hoa Lac High-Tech Park in Hanoi. It is designed with 60,000 servers over 21,000sq.m of floor area, and total power consumption of up to 30MW.

Meanwhile, FPT is building its fourth data centre in the Saigon High-Tech Park. Currently, FPT operates three data centres with a total floor area of ​​17,000sq.m.

Data centres play an important role in storing, processing, and managing huge amounts of data for the digital world. The industry in Vietnam is increasingly demonstrating strong growth in revenues, creating jobs for local workers. Currently, customers are using data centre services mostly in gaming, e-commerce, banking, and securities.

According to a report on the global data centre industry released in February by Research and Markets, the market in Vietnam is expected to reach over $1 billion in 2028 and almost $1.3 billion in 2030. Vietnam is currently one of the top 10 emerging data centres markets worldwide.

However, the size of Vietnam’s data centre market is still small compared to neighbours such as Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Meanwhile, Asia-Pacific is a region with a much higher data centre development rate than others, with a value of about $30 billion and a growth rate of 19 per cent annually until 2028.

According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, Vietnam currently boasts 32 small- and medium-sized commercial data centres, with a total capacity of 145MW.

Currently, most companies participating in Vietnam are domestic telecoms companies such as NTT, VNTT, Viettel, VNPT, FPT Telecom, and CMC Telecom. The latter four companies currently account for approximately 97 per cent of the market.

IT infrastructure providers are mainly international, including HP, Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, Lenovo, and Oracle.

Siemens holds first Data Centre Day in Vietnam Siemens Vietnam on April 9 held Vietnam Data Centre Day in Hanoi, attracting more than 130 delegates including industry experts, thought leaders, technology providers, and government representatives.

Nvidia Group may build an AI centre in Ho Chi Minh City During a recent visit of Nvidia Corporation's vice-president Keith Strier to Ho Chi Minh City on April 26, Phan Van Mai, Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, expressed his desire that Nvidia would choose the southern metropolis as the destination to build a new AI centre and also become a partner in building a roadmap for applying AI to the public administrative service system.

Alibaba plans $1 billion data centre in Vietnam Chinese teach giant Alibaba Group Holding Limited plans to build a data centre in Vietnam to meet legal requirements for local data storage and to meet to increasing demand in one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies, according to Nikkei.

Hyosung plans data centre in Ho Chi Minh City South Korean industrial conglomerate Hyosung Corporation has expressed its intention to build a data centre in Saigon Hi-Tech Park (SHTP).

Microsoft, Amazon to invest billions in French tech Microsoft on Sunday announced four billion euros in investment for developing data centres in France, joining fellow US giant Amazon in committing to the country's tech infrastructure.

ST Telemedia and VNG launch data centre partnership On May 15, Singapore-headquartered firm ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) and Vietnam's VNG Corporation announced a strategic collaboration to develop and manage international standard data centres in Ho Chi Minh City.

GELEX and FPT sign MoU on digital transformation A new deal between GELEX Group and FPT Corporation is expected to advance comprehensive digital transformation and both parties' business operations, while further driving the country’s development.