Please tell us a bit about your career to date and how you got to where you are today
My education and career background is actually in telecommunication. I started my career working with equipment vendors, such as Siemens, Fujitsu, Nokia, Ericsson, and then somewhere along the way, I took a leap to work on the service provider side. In 2016 I joined NTT Communications, the Japanese giant. There were only a few people who knew or understood how to sell colocation services, and I was no exception. It was all new stuff for me, and I was lucky, because since NTT was such a large global organization, I could get experience from all parts of the organization around the world. Since then, I’ve stayed in data centers – I’ve also had the opportunity to work with Princeton Digital Group. Prior to moving into data centers as a market analyst, I spent some time on the dark fiber connectivity industry , which is equally important as infrastructure supporting data center connectivity. This is something that I would also talk about in the session on the third of April, that connectivity and data center, they go hand in hand.
What drives you in terms of analyzing and reporting on data centers and technology?
It’s always good being in this industry, because it’s continuous learning. You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next day in this data center space. Acquisitions happen very commonly and a private equity may just turn up out of nowhere and make an announcement that they are also investing in data centers.
This role as a Market Analyst also requires a strong foundation of relationship and trust. The industry has also gradually shifted their mindset, given that data center sales is strongly relationship driven these days, it is no longer about who has the most certifications or the best brand of UPS and Cooling infrastructure. Data Centers facilities need to be out there and actively doing smart marketing. In summary, when I reach out to these data center providers, I get various reactions and generally each market behaves differently. We have to respect that some data centers do not wish to disclose information, but I have seen the shift where more data centers are open to talk about their positioning in the market. All these came after some time that they understand what I do as an Insight Analyst, and what value I bring to them.
In terms of datacenterHawk, what’s your point of difference, in terms of what you do?
The datacenterHawk team comes from various backgrounds, but we all have one thing in common – somewhere along our career life, we have worked in roles related to data centers. This could be as a Planner, Advisor, Sales Director, in Marketing etc.
This career history is an important element of each of us being an Analyst in datacenterHawk, so that when we engage in a conversation with our partners, we are also sharing enabling information about the market. For example, when a new player enters and may naively have a rather unrealistic expectation, we politely offer our opinion and observation as to how the reality does not meet their expectation. This two-way communication is very unique as there is something new in this industry, every day.
What are you thinking about in terms of your Keynote presentation at CDC Melbourne on 3rd April?
I think about how I want to put the storyline for this presentation, because it’s not about presenting the facts, because the facts people can just look up. But it’s about creating a storyline for people, especially people that don’t always live and breathe data centers. They do data center business, but they may not be aware of the whole picture.
In Australia, Sydney remains the most established market for data centers today. I can draw comparison to another established market, let’s say Japan. For many years, Tokyo was the sole market in which data centers were growing rapidly. It is clear why because Tokyo has the population, is the financial hub for Japan, many companies are headquartered there. Then a geopolitical situation affected the landscape, after a big earthquake hit Tokyo, then the market realized that there was a need for a second market, and this was when Osaka started.
Many cities in APAC started off in exactly the same way. In our nearest neighbour – Indonesia – Jakarta is the main market for data centers, and Surabaya has always been talked about as the second market, but it has not taken off yet.
Singapore needs that second market, but does not have the resources within the country, thus Batam and Johor have now become the spillover destinations.
Melbourne is no different, with approximately the same population as Sydney, and the availability of resources such as land and power, it is just about time that I look forward to witnessing Melbourne’s growth as the second market in Australia.
Growing Melbourne …
My point is that I think that Sydney will continue to grow, because, after all, it’s the financial hub, the center of the economy. But then Melbourne, being a few hundred kilometers away from Sydney, and since it offers far more attractive electricity and land pricing, I think that it will be the next growth area for sure.
I have seen governments in APAC with initiatives such as Special Economic Zones – tax relief, tax holidays. I’m not sure if the Victorian Government is thinking along those lines. Then second to that it’s about submarine connectivity. If you go to the telegeography website, you can see so many submarine cables terminating in Sydney, but not so many yet in Melbourne. More international connectivity landing in Melbourne will drive user experience and with Australia embarking on a more intense digital economy, surely the data center market will grow concurrently.
Last but not least, I think we can expect a high requirement for low latency connectivity between data centers. Fiber networks from one data center to another, it’s some form of the derivative of data center business, and while bandwidth business is already a commodity, the industry is now seeing more demands for dark fiber infrastructure.
