FEATURE
SOMETIMES “ENOUGH” IS NOT ENOUGH Singapore May Be Able to Square the Data Centre Growth Circle Sustainably, But it Cannot Offer Sufficient Diversity
BY NIGEL PARNELL & EDITED BY JULIAN RAWLE WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JOHN MURRAY
O
ver the last sixty years, Singapore’s geographical position, its free and open market economy, its stable government, and market-oriented regulatory environment has under-pinned a remarkable transformation of this small city state into the region’s richest commercial hub and home to the regional headquarters of many multinational organisations. However, the irresistible rise of Information Communications Technology as a core component of global commerce has brought the city state’s pre-eminence as an ICT hub into question as Singapore faces significant challenges from within and without. Although Singapore has by far the highest GDP per capita in the region, since the end of the pandemic, the country’s GDP growth is lagging behind its neighbours, especially Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia,
and Vietnam. This reflects the physical constraints, such as population size and land mass, that Singapore faces. Eventually, logistics, space, human capital capabilities, and costs of doing business in Singapore will become either saturated and/or cost prohibitive. By this time, Singapore will need to have re-positioned and reinvented itself. Moreover, when we focus down on the requirements of the ICT community, two key requirements have become so important that they are overriding other considerations. Those are Sustainability and Diversity. In the last fifteen years, Hyperscalers have become highly influential, not only in the design and development of transmission networks, such as the existing 25 and planned 14 international submarine fibre-optic systems landing in Singapore, but also in defining data centre business strategies. MAY 2023 | ISSUE 130 35