Asia’s Leading Data Centers Sign Memorandum of Understanding to Form Data Center Alliance
Singapore, 18 June 2008
Four of South East Asia’s leading data centers namely Singapore’s 1-Net Singapore, Malaysia’s The AIMS Asia Group, Vietnam’s CMC Telecom and Thailand’s TCC Technology (TCCT) announced today the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to form a Data Center Alliance to meet acute data center requirements in the region. Together, the data centers within the Alliance will form a one-stop Hub that provides a full suite of services and connectivity.
With a combined space of more than 500,000 square feet and a projected annual turnover of S$100 million by 2009, the Alliance will become one of the biggest data center operators in the region catered for first-tier telcos, government agencies, banks and other businesses.
The focal point of this Alliance is to create network and systems interoperability while allowing peering between all its data centers to enable seamless transfer of data and digital media for enterprises. It will also offer value added managed services such as Digital Asset Management and delivery systems. Through the Alliance, customers can easily set up complementary and alternative disaster recovery sites across borders. The objective is to ensure enterprise customers can gain easy access to the same high level of service at every data center within the Alliance.
Upon signing the MOU, members of the Alliance will move towards definitive agreements between the parties, common Service Level Agreements (SLA) and establish peering between the data centers so as to start operations by end of 2008.
Other priorities of the Alliance include working towards jointly developing technologies and promoting adoption of industry standards among its members such as a Green Data Center initiative to drive energy efficient processes and standards.
Unlike other data centers, this four-country Alliance extends a unique advantage of providing regional value added services while understanding and serving local customer needs. Enterprises can expect to reap full benefits at each of the data centers under the Alliance including best practices, high reliability and security.
The data centers within the Alliance will meet Tier III and above standards as stated by the Data Center Tier Classification from Uptime Institute. They will also be using ISO27001 as reference for the information security management system (ISMS), a quality management system (QMS) as per ISO9001 and an ISO20000 reference for IT Service Management Standard.
Driven by sharp growth in IT services in Asia, the data center services market is experiencing colossal demand. In Singapore alone, according to an IDC Market Analysis Report, the market size for data center services is estimated to be US$270M in 2007 and is forecasted to reach US$326M in 2011 at a CAGR of 7%.
“1-Net Singapore is proud to be a member of this Alliance with such established partners in the region. We see this Alliance as an opportunity to extend our services by providing a comprehensive suite of regional DC solutions to meet the regional business needs of our customers. We are excited to integrate our strengths with our partners’ and create significantly more energy efficient, secured and reliable cross border data center services,” said Mr. Yow Tau Keon, Managing Director, 1-Net Singapore.
“The formation of this Alliance will allow for borderless connectivity across the region and open up opportunities for our collective customer base to access a wider market. As an operator of carrier neutral data centers focused in growing interconnectivity between service providers, AIMS’ participation in this Alliance will now enable seamless convergence amongst service providers,” said Mr. Gan Te-Shen, Group CEO of The AIMS Asia Group.
“The Alliance not only expands each member’s influence in the data center services market of the region but also brings customer’s satisfaction to the highest level by the cross-border interconnected data centers, exchanged technologies and quality of services. As one of the first and largest Neutral-carrier Data Services Provider in Vietnam, CMC Telecom see such fascinating project as part of our Data Center Global Supply Chain strategy,” said Mr. Pham Anh Chien, Chief Executive Officer of CMC Telecom.
“Going forward, TCCT anticipates healthy growth of data centers in multinational market. Even with our well-known position as Thailand’s leading carrier neutral data center provider with high level of trust from our oversea clients, TCCT aims to thoroughly strategize the collaboration with our Data Center Partners in Asia to proactively build the strong Data Center Regional Networking Community to exchange and enrich Data Center Knowledge via this Alliance Program. The synergy among our partners in this region will also enable our clients’ mission critical business to better manage their risk via the Cross Border Alternative Disaster Recovery Sites Project,” said Mr. Kosit Suksingha, Managing Director of TCCT.
“IDA welcomes the formation of the data center alliance as this is in line with our efforts under our Digital Marketplace programme (DMP) to establish a trusted and conducive environment for digital media businesses to securely host, manage and trade digital media assets. Furthermore, we are encouraged to see the alliance focusing on promoting industry best practices and standards as this also aligns well with our efforts to establish best practices and technical standard guidelines to facilitate international digital media asset exchange and trade,” said Ms Tham Ai Chyn, Assistant Chief Executive, Industry and Cluster Development, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.
Said Mr Yew Sung Pei, Assistant Chief Executive Officer of International Enterprise (IE) Singapore, “IE Singapore works closely with Singapore-based ICT companies like 1-Net Singapore to enhance their regional and international partnerships, and expand their presence outside Singapore. 1-Net Singapore was introduced to CMC Telecom during IE Singapore”s telecommunications business mission to Hanoi early this year. We are happy to have played a part in matching the two and contributing to this regional partnership. The Data Center Alliance will allow the companies to complement one another”s resources and become a topnotch one-stop hub in providing data center services to regional customers.”
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