Johor’s pipeline plans of up to 5.7GW from international operators and cloud service providers indicate strong long-term investment confidence in the data center hub, says DC Byte’s latest report on SIJORI released yesterday. “While most of Johor’s capacity is in the committed and early-stage categories—driven by campus-style developments typically ranging from 200 to 300 MW and designed for phased expansion based on market demand—the scale of pipeline plans indicates strong long-term investment confidence,” the report said. It added that Johor has emerged as the preferred location for hyperscale developments.
The report listed a number of firsts for Peninsular Malaysia’s southern-most state which include the following:
1). Johor is the first market in Southeast Asia to adopt campus-style deployment models comparable to those in the United States, characterised by low-rise buildings and large-scale land utilisation. These expansive campuses allow for phased, high-volume growth that supports long-term hyperscale demand, particularly relevant for growing AI-related workloads.
2). Johor is the first location in Southeast Asia where hyperscale operators are directly investing in public infrastructure in a bid to achieve long-term scalability. An example is AirTrunk’s partnership with Johor Special Water (JSW) to develop a recycled water system using unused wastewater, to supply water to its data centres in the state.
3). Johor is one of the first to adopt emerging deployment models such as modular and prefabricated technologies, for example, Brightray Data Centres’s eight-month construction timeline using modular and prefabrication methods.
With sufficient power, land availability, and lower cost bases, the city is poised for further growth with major transmission infrastructure upgrades underway to cope with surging power demands. The report concluded that the city has moved beyond its early role as a spillover market for Singapore and has developed into a mature and scalable hub for data centers.
Singapore however still leads as a key connectivity and network hub, as well as the primary location for critical and latency-sensitive workloads.
“While growth has been tempered by past capacity restrictions, expectations around a new Data Centre Call for Application (DC-CFA) in 2H 2025 are fuelling market optimism and could unlock a new wave of expansion,” the report revealed.
Meanwhile, Batam, the third city in the SIJORI Growth Triangle, has shown early indicators of a development trajectory similar to Johor’s initial growth phase with great potential of being a renewable energy hub supplying power long-term to data centers in the region, said the report.
“With Special Economic Zone (SEZ) status, proximity to Singapore, and backing under Indonesia’s digital economy roadmap, Batam is poised to become a competitive player in the SIJORI ecosystem with a total of over 460MW in aggregate pipeline capacity. A growing pipeline of renewable energy projects could enhance the long-term viability of data centre investments in the region,” it said.
The SIJORI Growth Triangle is emerging as an important area for data centre development in Southeast Asia allowing for regional workload distribution across Singapore, Johor, and the Riau Islands, while also supporting diversification and the use of renewable energy sources available in Johor and the Riau Islands.
Colocation Hub
The SIJORI region is now home to an increasingly diverse mix of global and regional colocation players with the top 10 operators collectively representing over 930MW of live IT capacity. AirTrunk and Bridge Data Centres lead in live capacity, reflecting strong momentum in hyperscale deployments, particularly in Johor, while regional players such as DayOne and K2 Data Centres have also made significant inroads, leveraging first-mover advantage in emerging hubs, as per the DC Byte report.
SIJORI: Major Colocation Operators (Source: DC Byte)
AirTrunk
Bridge Data Centres
DayOne
ST Telemedia Global
Equinix
Digital Realty
Keppel Data Centres
Nxera
K2 Data Centres
Princeton Digital Group
