Digital Realty is in Malaysia. Is Johor next?
The operator goes from zero to 32MW, but its connectivity play hints at more.
Digital Realty today says it has officially launched its operations in Malaysia, just months after announcing plans to enter the market. It inaugurated its Malaysia platform with Minister of Digital Gobind Singh Deo earlier today. Its first order of business? To quickly scale up to 32MW.
From zero to 32MW
In January this year, Digital Realty announced it was entering the Malaysian market with the acquisition of CSF Advisers and its TelcoHub1 data centre, now known as KUL10. KUL10 is more of an Internet Exchange Point (IXP), and at the time Digital Realty also agreed to acquire adjacent land for a 14MW (IT load) data centre, targeted for completion by mid-2028.
Today, the company unveiled KUL11, a six-storey data centre with 15MW of capacity, located 500 metres away at Jalan Teknokrat 8. It will cater to AI and high-performance computing workloads. Together, the three facilities will give Digital Realty a 32MW campus within the next two years, up from zero last year.
The Johor question
While 32MW pales in comparison to the triple-digit campuses announced in Malaysia seemingly every other month, the acquisition of KUL10 makes it clear that the global operator is seeking to establish a base with strong connectivity. Having evolved from a pure space-and-power operator to one focused on scalable interconnection, Digital Realty has made connectivity a key part of its value proposition today.
So its opening moves are no surprise. But I think it's highly unlikely that Digital Realty will stop at these three data centres. In Malaysia, the vast majority of data centres are currently clustered around Cyberjaya or in Johor, with the latter surely the scene of the largest data centre build-up in Southeast Asia, if not the wider APAC region.
Does Digital Realty have its eye on Johor next?
