Indonesia's data centre market is heating up

Today went by in a whirlwind as I moderated four panels to a packed hall at the Indonesia Cloud & Datacenter Convention in Jakarta.

It’s been a few years since I last visited Jakarta, and the hospitality of the people never ceases to amaze me. I also had the chance to meet so many in person.

Here's what I learned.

The Indonesian market on the rise

When I first started writing about data centres in Indonesia nearly a decade ago, I was surprised to discover that the typical “data centre” was often just a server room.

One interviewee even recalled visiting a residential house that had been converted into a mini data centre - hosting mission-critical servers in a makeshift setup.

How things have changed.

Today, ultra-modern data centres are being developed by local firms like DCI and SM+, while regional players such as PDG and STT GDC are expanding their presence.

With Indonesia’s massive population and high mobile penetration, there’s a strong sense of optimism around the country’s digital infrastructure. As one panellist noted, organic demand alone will keep driving momentum.

A market unto itself

Don't make the mistake of conflating Indonesia with any other market though. From what I’ve gathered, Indonesia isn’t just massive - it’s also truly unique.

Here are a few things I learned about the typical Indonesian customer:

• They like providers that are not too loud, flashy.
• Prefers spreading their workloads out.
• Users are extremely price sensitive.

It has its quirks too.

An informal chat with Antony Dharmawan of Vision+ yesterday stood out in my mind. He was telling me how Indonesian customers sign up to watch on-demand video at the very last minute.

Like 15 minutes before a popular sports match, for instance.

• Traffic can spike from 2,000 to >2 million in 15 mins.
• Cloud autoscaling falls completely flat.
• Other solutions simply don't work.

So what worked? Predefined cloud configurations that are launched up to two hours ahead of time. Intriguing indeed.

SM+ site visit

And oh, I did a site visit of SM+'s upcoming SMX01 data centre yesterday. An amazing facility that will be AI-ready when completed next year.

Hats off to the W.Media team for an incredible event and all the hard work behind it.

Finally, I'm truly grateful to those who came up and shared that you read my content regularly. I appreciate it - and it means more than you know.

Do drop me a note if we've met. And my apologies if we didn't manage to.