Malaysia Digital Economy Corp. Sdn. Bhd. (MDEC) and the International Data Center Authority (IDCA) have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to support and promote the growth of Malaysia’s digital economy. The goal is to establish Malaysia as a prominent global destination for digital investments and foster its position as a modern, green data center and cloud infrastructure hub.
The collaboration aims to align with Malaysia’s objectives of reducing carbon emissions by 2023 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050. To achieve these goals, the initiative includes the development of a nationwide Green Data Center and Digital Hub Blueprint, according to IDCA. This blueprint aims to encourage innovation, prioritize safety and security, protect data sovereignty, minimize carbon emissions, generate high-paying jobs, and attract investments.
This is part of Malaysia’s on-going effort to drive the country’s digital economy and green initiatives. In January, Singapore & Malaysia signed agreements that focused on the digital economy and green economy. The two countries also inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that will enable them to cooperate on issues such as personal data protection as well as cybersecurity.
The Malaysian data center industry is expected to continue its upward trend in the coming years. According to Arizton’s research, the data center market in Malaysia is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.41% during the 2022-2028 period. Malaysia has witnessed a surge of activity within the data center industry.
Australia’s NEXTDC Ltd recently announced plans to invest RM3 billion in the development of Kuala Lumpur 1 (KL1), a Tier IV-certified data center. It is NEXTDC’s first step into Asia.
In April, MN Holdings Bhd announced its partnership with China’s Shanghai DC-Science Co Ltd to work together on building a high performance data center in Johor. The project is valued at an estimated US$600 million. The data center will include a 12,000-rack facility supported by a power load of 120MW, and dual power supply.
In March this year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it will be investing RM25.5 billion in Malaysia to develop its cloud services infrastructure in the country.
In January, AirTrunk, an Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) hyperscale data center specialist, announced its entry into Malaysia with plans to develop a 150+MW data center named AirTrunk JHB1 (JHB1) which will be the company’s first in Malaysia and ninth in APJ, taking its data center platform to over 1.35GW of capacity. Other leading data center providers in Malaysia include AIMS DC, Bridge DC, TM One, NTT Communications, Strateq, Basis Bay, HDC and others.
There are over 20 data centers in the country. With Cyberjaya and Johor positioned as known hubs in Malaysia.
