Data Centres

Johor is the fastest-growing data centre market in SEA

Johor is the fastest-growing data centre market in Southeast Asia with 1.6GW of total supply.

Paul Mah

Paul Mah

— 2 min read
Johor is the fastest-growing data centre market in SEA
Photo Credit: Unsplash/zienpng. Aerial view of Masjid Kota Iskandar, a Johor state mosque.

Johor is the fastest-growing data centre market in Southeast Asia with 1.6GW of total supply.

According to DC Byte, Johor has "rocketed" to Southeast Asia's fastest-growing data centre market, capitalising on Singapore's moratorium.

I've written about it previously:

🆙 A look at the numbers

As noted in DC Byte's 2024 Global Data Centre Index released this morning, the baseline in Johor in 2019 was just 10MW of data centres.

Today, it stands at an astounding 1,600MW. To be clear, this includes Live Supply, data centres being built, and Early Stage Supply (ESS).

When you take away ESS - which are data centre builds that might not happen, the figure drops to slightly below 800MW.

Singapore has 988MW of data centre capacity right now, and the completion of current builds will bring it to 1,444MW.

So 1,444MW in Singapore against ~800MW in Johor.

Of course, we are comparing a country with a state. As a whole, Malaysia has an incredible 2,016MW of ESS; Singapore has just 1MW of ESS. When the dust settles, Singapore will be far behind in absolute capacity.

⏩ Making it work

This growth didn't happen by chance. As DC Byte noted, MIDA and MDEC had established a Digital Investment Office as a one-stop centre.

Power approvals were also streamlined to reduce the duration to power a data centre to "as short as 12 months".

If you are up for a visit, the main data centre locations in Johor are:

  • Sedenak Tech Park.
  • Nusajaya Tech Park.
  • YTL Green Data Centre Park.

🏢 Does it matter?

Over the years, power availability had become the de facto standard to measure data centre capacity. It seems right too, in our age of power-hungry GPUs and HPC systems.

But like PUE, "MW" only offers a broad overview that can actually be wildly inaccurate. As an example, how many of Singapore's data centres are operating at their "rated" power availability?

I don't have the figure.

But I have heard enough first-hand accounts to confidently say that most data centres here are probably operating far below their published capacity.

Would love to hear your opinion on this.

You can read DC Byte's report here.

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