Hong Kong is ushering in more advanced data centres, backed by government incentives and strong market demand.
The campaign is primed not only to entice major multinationals to set up such facilities in Hong Kong, but also large mainland enterprises.
Daniel Lai, the city's new government chief information officer, said: 'We expect more data centre projects to support the needs of economic development both in Hong Kong and across the Asia-Pacific region in the years ahead.'
The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, the agency that sets Hong Kong's policies for information and communication technologies, has received about 60 inquiries about the setting up of new data centres and provided assistance to 10 projects in the past six months.
'Our consultant, Frost & Sullivan, has estimated the demand for data centres in Hong Kong will grow by a compound annual growth rate of 9.8 per cent from 2009 to 2015,' said Lai. 'Last year, the growth rate in terms of net demand [for data centre capacity] exceeded 18 per cent.'
A data centre is a secure, temperature-controlled facility equipped 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.