Data center boom cues PH as tech hub
MANILA, Philippines – The burgeoning industry of data centers in the Philippines is only expected to further grow with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, according to the top honcho of global technology firm Nokia.
Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark, in an interview with reporters last week, said greater investments are being poured into this sector to build more hubs that house critical servers and applications at a time of heightened digitalization.
“Without that (technology infrastructure), you’re not going to reap the benefits of AI and cloud computing,” Lundmark said.
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Both of these technologies require large data usage, which can be hosted by data centers.
The use of AI has been on the rise since chatbot ChatGPT became popular. It has several use cases that can enhance a company’s operations, including processing of real-time data that can aid in making quick and informed business decisions.
Cloud technology, AI
Cloud technology, meanwhile, has become crucial for hybrid work setup as it enables company employees to access files and other applications digitally anywhere.
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Lundmark sees the potential of the Philippines as a data center hub that caters to hyperscalers or entities that provide cloud, networking and internet services. These include Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, Alibaba AliCloud, IBM and Oracle.
“Data centers, I think, are a major opportunity for the Philippines,” he added. “You are geographically perfectly located to be a hub between North America and Asia.”
Lundmark said that Nokia currently provides data center services to local telecommunication companies. Nokia offers a solution for data center switching, which supports the flow of data among the servers.
Telco players like PLDT and Globe Telecom have been investing heavily to build up their data center capacities in recent years.
PLDT is set to open a 50-megawatt (MW) data center in Laguna by July.
Meanwhile, the data center arm of the Ayala-led Globe broke ground for its 124-MW data center in Fairview, Quezon City last year.
In 2023, the Department of Information and Communications Technology said it was expecting the local data center capacity, currently at 60 MW, to grow by 500 percent in the next two years due to increasing investment for such facilities.
