Microsoft US$1B Malaysian Data Centre Region to be Built in Cyberjaya?
The announcement that was just made today is Microsoft’s most significant project in Malaysia since establishing its operation here in 1992, the company today has unveiled its new Bersama Malaysia (Together with Malaysia) initiative.
The initiative involves an investment of US$1 billion (Approx. RM 4.1 billion) over the next 5 years and the project is expected to establish the first Azure data centre region in Malaysia.
A datacentre region is a set of data centres that are linked together through a dedicated low-latency network and latency-defined perimeter. This means Microsoft will need a large space or area to enable this service.
However, in the press release, Microsoft did not announce where the data centre region will be located.
Microsoft will establish its first datacenter region in the Greater Kuala Lumpur area and deliver access to the full Microsoft Cloud
In last year’s news, Microsoft has already started constructing a data centre in the Southern state of Johor. If the other data centre will be located in Greater Kuala Lumpur, these two facilities will create the datacentre region that’s aligned with the initiative.
Update: based on Microsoft Azure’s website, the new datacentre region will be called Malaysia West.
Singapore has issued data centre construction moratorium late last year, as the country struggles to find a solution to sustainability issues and a shortage of land. This makes Malaysia attractive due to good connectivity, safe from natural disasters and no shortage in the availability of lands.
So could the Greater Kuala Lumpur location be in Cyberjaya? Currently, there’s no publicly available information. However, there are possibilities of it to be built here because Cyberjaya still has ample space for large-scale construction of data centres. The city is also covered with an internet backbone which supports this type of infrastructure.
Another interesting observation that I made is that a big plot of land was recently being cleared near the Southern part of Cyberjaya just a few days ago. It’s been a while since Cyberjaya has seen this kind of land clearing activities. The area is also meant for enterprise buildings and not for residential development.
Besides Cyberjaya, Technology Park Malaysia (TPM) could also be a potential candidate, given that the former CEO of MaGIC, Dzuleira Abu Bakar was just appointed the CEO of TPM.
I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before we’ll know where this new data centre will be located. In the meantime, I’m crossing my fingers that it will be in Cyberjaya.
[I’m an advocate of Cyberjaya, MSC, tech, and innovation. Follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn]
