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Cloudspace2 confirms HK as top data centre

Pacnet, the operator of Asia's largest privately owned submarine cable network, plans to accelerate development of new data centres across the region after yesterday launching a US$44 million facility in Tseung Kwan O.

Chief executive Bill Barney said this new infrastructure, called CloudSpace2, was 'the most advanced data centre to open in Hong Kong in the last 10 years'.

'We're in the lead right now, but there are a lot of other companies coming after us over the next 12 to 24 months,' Barney said.

He said he expected construction to speed up for the rest of the more than 12 'high-tier' data centres Pacnet planned to build across Asia over the next three to four years at a cost of US$300 million.

He said these would serve cloud-computing enterprises that demanded 'high-power, high-performance and high-availability' features that older facilities could not provide.

Cloud computing enables companies and consumers to buy, lease, sell or distribute over the internet as well as private networks a vast range of software, business systems, data and other digital resources, including storage, as an on-demand service, like electricity from a power grid. 'Cloud' refers to the internet, which is depicted in that form in computer network diagrams.

Such resources are hosted in data centres. These facilities provide a secure, temperature-controlled environment to house large-capacity server computers and data-storage systems, which are maintained with multiple power sources and have high-bandwidth links to the internet.

The two-storey CloudSpace2 is located at the Hong Kong cable landing station of Pacnet's EAC-C2C submarine cable network, providing direct connections to mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

Pacnet has signed up five new customers for CloudSpace2, which is expected to reach full capacity in the next three years.

Daniel Lai, the city's new government chief information officer, yesterday said Pacnet's new facility helped 'reaffirm Hong Kong's status as the prime location for data centres in the Asia-Pacific region'.

Other high-tier data centres in development include Google's US$300 million facility in Tseung Kwan O and NNT Com Asia's HK$3 billion complex in the same district.

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