The rapid rise of Batam as a data centre market
Phase 1 of Nongsa Digital Park Data Centre Hub sold out.
"The Batam digital zone is sold out." The incredible rise of the Batam data centre market and what Indonesia's Chief Economic Affairs Minister meant.
On Monday, the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto, was quoted by the Jakarta Globe for a remark made at a roundtable.
Sold out
The context was about how Indonesia is seeing interest from global tech giants and how its digital economic zones, particularly in Batam, are at full capacity.
Quote: “The Batam digital zone has already sold out. Global players like Google, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle have secured their spots. We’re now preparing for an expansion to meet the growing demand.”
Read Jakarta Globe's report here.
What did he mean?
Photo Credits: (Left) Illustration by Nongsa Digital Park; (Right) Paul Mah
Fast growth
But first, let's talk about Batam.
In a separate briefing earlier, Airlangga also said that 12 US companies have built data centres in Indonesia. I'll add that a significant amount of this is happening in Batam.
As I wrote in June, Batam is the site of a growing cluster of data centres in Southeast Asia. Today, it hosts around a dozen data centres, almost all built over the last few years.
Some advantages of Batam for data centres:
- Designated Free Trade Zone (FTZ).
- 13 subsea cables; more on the way.
- Future access to renewable energy.
- Away from earthquake-prone areas.
Crucially, it's just 20km from Singapore, which means negligible latency suited for latency-sensitive enterprise workloads.
Plenty of room
So, is Batam maxed out for data centres? Not at all.
The statement pertains to Phase One of the Nongsa Digital Park Data Centre Hub, which is currently sold out. But more land is expected to be allocated soon.
Indeed, there are "a lot" of plots of land in Batam that are suitable for use to build data centre infrastructure, says @Marco Bardelli to me.
For instance, the NeutraDC Nxera Batam data centre venture is located outside Nongsa, at the Kabil Industrial Estate.
Oracle in Batam
Speaking of Oracle. In a separate report, Airlangga said Oracle is planning to invest up to $6 billion in a data centre project in Batam.
It isn't hard to guess the location of Oracle's data centre in Batam.
Here are the announced capacities:
- PDG - 96MW*.
- BW - 120MW.
- NeutraDC Nxera - 51MW.
- DayOne and INA - 72MW.
- Golden Digital Gateway - 25.2MW.
*Not started construction.
One mystery remains to me, however, is the photo I took from Jensen Huang's Computex keynote in May. Is Oracle really building 260MW of data centres in Indonesia?
