A week of candid conversations with data centre insiders

I spoke with a few dozen data centre executives and professionals over the last few days. Here's a few things I learned.

It's hard to believe it's a year since W.Media's last Cloud and Datacenter Convention in Singapore, a premier event for those in the data centre space.

Over 1,500 showed up this year, and that's not counting the hundreds more who came for OCP's first Southeast Asia Tech Day - held as part of SIJORI week.

Here are some conversations I heard this week.

Signs of distress in Johor

I've written quite a bit about how electricity pricing is up in Malaysia and some guesses as to why this is happening now.

Over the last few days, there's been a series of alarming reports alluding to Johor's potential demise. I think the situation is a bit more nuanced than this dire assessment.

This is because the price hikes affect data centre operators differently depending on customers, strategy, and financial clout.

• Some are upset at reduced margins, but life goes on.
• Those with land but no contracts might delay plans.
• Others might be left hanging as clients "wait and see."

Ultimately, it's the uncertainty that's delaying investments. Why? Left unaddressed is the prospect of future price increases. That's the real problem.

tldr; This is very solvable if the authorities move quickly and act assertively.

Ironically, it's those that's keeping mum that might be the most distressed. Already, I am hearing of data centre operators looking to bail.

An 'accidental' job

I had a really fun fireside chat with Dan Madrigal on building an AI data centre, where Dan gamely took on all questions - I'll write this up separately.

But it was his story of how he entered the data centre industry by chance that struck me. And speaking to others, I realised this isn't unique to Dan.

Data centre professionals come from diverse backgrounds, including from non-technical fields. In fact, the only common ground appears to be... a lack of common ground. Is that true for you too?

Data centre intelligence

Had a great panel with James Murphy, Jabez Tan and Glen Duncan.

Some learnings:

• More data sources make for a better ecosystem.
• Would you reply on one source to build a data centre?
• Different methodologies serve as a sanity check.

Others

I'm hearing of at least one data centre upgrading project. This is important as many data centres in the region are old - and will need upgrading at some point.

Looking forward to learning more.

And oh, I may have the chance to visit some data centres in the region.