Johor, located in the southern part of Malaysia, is set to attract RM17 billion (US$3.8b) in new data center investments in 2024 from players that include YTL Group, Yondr Group, AirTrunk, MN Holdings, GDS Holdings, and Equinix, according to local news report.
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 has been planned to include a 12,000-rack facility supported by a power load of 120MW, and dual power supply. The project will also have access to a daily average water supply of around 5,000 metric tonnes (MT) and network access infrastructure.
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.
This growth is partly linked to Singapore’s 2019 decision to halt construction of new facilities over environmental concerns, although the moratorium was lifted in 2022 with strict regulations like a 60MW limit.
Malaysia is among the hubs for data centers in Southeast Asia due to its strategic location, political stability, and growing digital economy. Malaysia has a well-established telecommunications infrastructure with several undersea cables that provide high-speed internet connectivity to other countries in the region.
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.
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. 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, there are also new locations being identified by data center players such as Kedah where connectivity and power are among key considerations.