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ata center provider PT Graha Teknologi Nusantara (GTN) expects to kick off the operation of its maiden data center facility in Cikarang, West Java, by October this year in an effort to tap business opportunities from the increasing demand for data storage from the digital industry.

The new 1.5-hectare facility, located some 50 kilometers east of Jakarta, will be able to hold about 22,000 server racks, making it one of the biggest data centers in the Asia Pacific, the company has claimed.

GTN’s primary investors, which include parent company, publicly listed information and technology firm Multipolar Technology, and Japanese firms Mitsui Knowledge Industry Co. and Mitsui & Co., have invested up to Rp 400 billion (US$30.5 million) in the new center, which will be able to house data from prospective clients, mainly in the private sector and digital businesses.

The new facility, GTN said, had been developed according to Japanese environmental and energy-saving standards.

“Data centers tend to be seen as useful for those who mainly have the knowledge about them. Otherwise, typical companies devote less space and capacity to a data center than they should, which is what has been seen in many situations,” Richard Kartawijaya, CEO of Graha Teknologi Nusantara, said during a recent visit to The Jakarta Post.

Primary customers for data storage centers tend to be those in the e-commerce industry, banks and retailers. Richard explained that because the e-commerce industry was on the rise, many new and old companies would need a place to store their data within Indonesia’s severely lacking digital infrastructure.

Richard voiced hope that the servers would be at full capacity within three years. He added that most customers for the soon-to-open center would likely be those in the private sector.

In the technical aspects, GTN, which was established in 2013, will allocate 150 specific servers to hold cloud computing services as a basis for a more advanced storage and integrated data facility.

With the rise of cloud computing in businesses worldwide, there is a need for larger data storage centers to meet the demands of a burgeoning digital economy like Indonesia’s. Options for Indonesia’s digital businesses range between using either a public or a private data center to keep track of their operations and their data.

Previously, tech giant Microsoft urged Indonesian businesses to take advantage of cloud-computing options by using a public data center, just like the one Microsoft provides with its Azure service.

“It decreases operational costs for many businesses because using cloud services is basically like outsourcing. Microsoft has a huge data center, capable of storing data and managing them for you. Why not use it?” Microsoft Indonesia’s national technology officer Tony Seno Hartono said in June.

He commented earlier that there was a lack of data centers with enough capacity for Indonesian digital businesses to operate with, resulting in a number of them using servers abroad.

Research firm Frost & Sullivan has estimated that the country’s IT spending will hit $3.8 billion by 2019, with 27 percent coming from banking, financial services and the insurance industry.

Last year, data center provider PT Sigma Cipta Caraka (Telkomsigma), a subsidiary of state-run telecommunications giant PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia, stated that it would expand its data center through both expansion and transformation of non-data center buildings.

According to its website, Telkomsigma currently operates three data centers in South Tangerang, Banten; Bogor, West Java; and Surabaya, East Java, with space measuring 4,000 square meters, 5100 sqm and 3,200 sqm, respectively.