9 reasons why Singapore's the ideal DC hub in Asia Pacific

The data centre niche is big business in Singapore, which has dozens of these multimillion-dollar facilities spread across the city-state of just five million. Besides being an important gateway connecting Southeast Asia and Asia to the rest of the world, as evident by the country’s strong air and sea transport network, what makes Singapore such a compelling data centre hub in Asia Pacific? We list out some of the top reasons below.

The top-notch infrastructure in Singapore means that businesses do not have to worry about the basics such as power and water. Power capacity is adequate and extremely stable, and recycled water is available for cooling systems. Network connectivity across the entire island is excellent with direct fibre optic connectivity to practically every household and commercial building.

Singapore is fortunate to be located within an area that is not known for natural disasters, with the most notable weather events being the seasonal thunderstorms that mostly take place towards the end of the year. The country is also not prone to flooding, thanks to a well-planned drainage network.

Many of the top international subsea cables land in Singapore, making it one of the top submarine cable hubs in the world. The country is connected to countries in every continent through more than 16 subsea cables, while its predominance on this front means that it is often the top destination for regional subsea cables built to serve the region.

The appeal of the country has resulted in Singapore emerging as a top data centre hub in the region. Success is also breeding further success, as the critical mass means that new operators cannot afford to ignore Singapore as a hub. This is evidenced by the fact that close to 7% of the total energy used in the country is consumed by data centres, significantly higher than the average of 1-2% in the rest of the world.

The combination of good connectivity and ample data centres make Singapore an ideal base for public cloud platforms as they expanded into the region over the last few years. Today, top public cloud platforms available within Singapore include Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, as well as a host of others.

Aside from a good track record, the use of third-party standards is the only other reliable way to differentiate the capabilities of colocation providers. Many of the standards and guidelines used to measure and evaluate data centres originate from Singapore. This includes the Technology Risk and Management (TRM) introduced by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the BCA-IMDA Green Data Centre Standard, and the Multi-Tier Cloud Security (MTCS) Standard for Singapore (SS 584) for cloud providers.

Singapore has a modern and advanced workforce that is highly competent in managing the critical infrastructure and cloud environments that undergird modern enterprises. Moreover, top engineers from around the world are attracted by the opportunity to work in a sophisticated and safe metropolitan city.

Consistently ranked as one of the most business-friendly countries in the world, Singapore has clearly spelt-out laws that cut away the ambiguity of doing business in the city state. Regulations are strongly pro-business with bureaucracy kept to a minimum, while tax rates are relatively low in comparison to other top cities.

Finally, the political climate in Singapore is stable, with an efficient administration that gets things done quickly. In addition, corruption is severely punished. This ensures that businesses can quickly establish their presence there to take advantage of new market trends without undue delays or unexpected overheads.