Industrial company Ticon announced a joint venture partnership with Singapore data centre service provider ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) to develop a data centre on 15 rai in central Bangkok.
The joint venture, Frasers Property-STT GDC, is expected to bring about an increase in demand for digital infrastructure and data centre capacity to keep up with the exponential increase in cloud storage in the region.
"We believe in the market potential of developing Thailand's digital economy and transforming urban living through smart cities," said Panote Sirivadhanabhakdi, chairman of Ticon. "Developing digital infrastructure via a state-of-the-art data centre is a key investment for the new economy."
As part of the Thailand 4.0 initiative, the digital economy is expected to contribute up to 25% of Thailand's GDP by 2027, he said. Public cloud spending in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan is expected to grow exponentially at a compound annual growth rate of 32.6% between 2016 to 2021, said Mr Panote.
"We have been offering international-standard quality in our industrial properties for more than 28 years in Thailand," said Ticon president Sopon Racharaksa. "We are confident our long-term experience in industrial property development together with STT GDC's world-class expertise in data centre development will create synergies and offer growth potential for the data centre business here."
The estimated investment cost of the centre is 7.3 billion baht and is to be deployed in phases. Construction is in the Ramkhamhaeng district in Bangkok, expected to start in mid-2019 and finish by 2020.
"This development marks STT GDC's first foray into the Thai data centre market, and will strengthen our expanding network across major data centre markets around the world," said Bruno Lopez, group chief executive of STT GDC.
"We are confident with our expertise in designing, building and operating data centres to the highest global standards in key markets such as Singapore, China, India and the UK, as well as the local expertise of Ticon in understanding the needs of the Thai market and navigating its regulatory environment, we will be able to meet the demands of our customers in here, support their digital growth and help them realise the Thailand 4.0 vision," he said.
