T

he data center industry in Southeast Asia has been growing tremendously over the last five years. Since 2011, the demand for data management has been massive, in that it has encouraged the proliferation of such services in many countries, including Indonesia.

Singapore, with an infrastructure that has matured from various sides, is a country that has been enjoying a boom in the data center industry. However, Indonesia, as well as Malaysia, are in fact now beginning to catch up on what has been achieved by the Lion City.

In terms of the market size, the range of numbers offered by market research institutes also have a wide spectrum.

Based on the prediction of market research institute TechNavio, the market size is predicted to reach US$359 million in 2020. Meanwhile, information technology service provider company, the Board Group, predicts that the industry will create a business value amounting to no less than $3.4 billion by the end of 2017.

The main factor, of course, is the dense population in the region, amounting to approximately 650 million people distributed in 10 countries. Indonesia itself is the biggest contributor in terms of population.

The large population in this region has led to an explosion of digital data on a massive scale. With a moderate prediction based on a report from the International Data Corporation (IDC), by the end of 2020 the amount of digital data worldwide will reach 44 trillion gigabytes (GB).

If the residents of Southeast Asia accounted for 8.5 percent of the world population, the digital data born from this region would reach at least 3.7 trillion GB.

If all this time Singapore has been taking advantage of the rapid demand for data center services, Indonesia also has a chance and an opportunity that is not less great.

From the regulatory side, there is already a legal provision in the form of Government Regulation No. 82/2012 governing the implementation of system and electronic transactions, which obliges the providers of electronic systems to situate their data centers in the sovereign territory of the Republic of Indonesia.

The government of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is also paying attention to infrastructure, especially in regard to the availability of basic facilities such as electricity and water supplies. One of its main priorities is the program to build new power plants to generate an additional 35,000 megawatts of electricity, which will indirectly secure the availability and stability of electricity.
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Obsolete data center technology also consumes electricity and water in excessive amounts.

Based on data from the Group Board in 2015, the number of service providers and data center facilities in Malaysia or Indonesia is not significantly different than in Singapore. If in Singapore the number of service providers is between 30 and 35 operators, in Indonesia this number is about 25 to 30.

However, when the subject of the comparison is the market share, then Singapore still controls about 50 percent, while the rest is distributed among five other countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei and Vietnam.

Data center technology is generally focused on two things, namely power usage effectiveness and water usage effectiveness.

Currently, the latest data center services have offered technology that has not been widely implemented by data center providers in Indonesia, such as cold containments, the use of back-up power with a dynamic rotary uninterruptable power supply (DR-UPS) technology that ensures continuous availability of electricity — unlike generators that take time to turn on — the use of water chillers that can save between 10 and 15 percent of electricity consumption compared to a conventional air conditioner and through the use of LED lights that can reduce power consumption.

On average, data center technology utilizes UPS as a backup power supply in order to provide a high degree of stability. The problem is UPS uses batteries that must be replaced periodically. The replacement of these batteries produce waste that is certainly not environmentally friendly.

Obsolete data center technology also consumes electricity and water in excessive amounts. The use of both these resources in the long term could indirectly be risky.

Therefore, the ideal data center service provider typically offers new technology that is environmentally friendly through a variety of technical approaches such as the use of cold containment racks, the management of resource efficiency based on LED lighting and the absence of hazardous waste from used UPS batteries, as well as environmental approaches ranging from tree planting around data center locations to environmentally friendly land and infrastructure management and the provision of water management facilities that meet certain standards.

In Indonesia today, data center service provider companies that have advantages in terms of location, security and facilities are now starting to emerge.

These sorts of companies generally offer better data center services compared to others that rely on cheap prices.

This is the reason why the guarantee of the availability of electricity is also not a joke. Electric power comes from two different power sources so that the power supply can be easily switched when disconnected.

In addition, the ideal data center must be neutral and open to various network service providers that have met the requirements.

The use of this premium technology is not necessarily followed by high service costs, thanks to the implementation of this environmentally friendly technology.

Additionally, there is now an association of data center services providers in Indonesia that can be a forum of cooperation and synergy in developing the data center business and industry in the country.

This kind of association is urgently needed to sustain the data center industry in global and regional contexts: for example, in competing with markets in Malaysia and Thailand, or in winning the market that has been enjoyed by Singapore.
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The writer is an information technology practitioner and general-secretary of the Indonesia Data Center Provider Organization (IDPRO). The views expressed are his own.