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Hong Kong skyline in 2013 Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images
Hong Kong skyline in 2013

NTT Launches Thailand, Hong Kong Data Centers

New capacity in Asia latest examples of ongoing global expansion

The latest data centers to come online as part of the rapid global expansion of data center capacity by the Japanese telecommunications and IT services giant NTT Communications are in Hong Kong and Thailand. The company announced completion of construction projects in both countries this week.

Hong Kong is one of Asia’s most important business centers. As such, it has become a key network interconnection and data center hub used by non-Asian companies to serve Asian markets, primarily mainland China, and for Asian companies to connect to and serve markets around the world.

The only other hub that’s close in importance for access between China and other key global markets is Singapore.

The new Hong Kong data center, called FDC2, completes the multi-phase build-out of NTT’s massive Hong Kong Financial Data Center complex. The complex’s total capacity is 7,000 racks.

Thailand has a robust manufacturing industry, its largest sector being electronics. The country is one of the two top suppliers of hard disk drives in the world (the other is China), a fact that became known to most people when the high-tech industry was hit by hard drive shortages that followed massive floods in Thailand in 2011.

According to NTT, there is demand for data center capacity in Thailand from local financial institutions as well as from multinationals looking to use outsourced data centers in the Southeast Asian nation.

Not surprisingly, flooding is a concern for those using and building data centers in Thailand. The NTT data center is in Bangkok suburbs, in an area four meters above sea level, where the risk of flooding is lower, according to the company. The facility is also surrounded by floodwalls and dykes.

This is the company’s second data center in the Bangkok market. It has about 40,000 square feet of data center space, enough for 1,400 IT racks, NTT said in a statement.

NTT has been expanding its global data center infrastructure rapidly over the past several years, primarily by acquiring controlling stakes in data center providers around the world and helping them finance expansion. Examples of companies NTT has bought include RagingWire in the US, e-shelter in Europe, PT Cyber in Indonesia, and NetMagic in India.

TAGS: Asia-Pacific
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