STT GDC Philippines, a joint venture between Globe Telecom Inc., Ayala Corp. and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres of Singapore, said Wednesday it expects a surge in demand for data storage this year and beyond.
“The data center industry has been seeing consistent and staggering growth in recent years, as demand for data storage grows globally. Every video you stream, every photo you post on social media, every app you download needs storage space, and that is housed in data centers,” STT GDC Philippines president and chief executive Carlo Malana said.
“The data center is the home of the cloud. There is simply no way we could advance digitalization without it,” he said.
Mana said the company expects demand for data storage to grow even faster this year and in the coming years. “That’s why STT GDC Philippines is bulking up on capacity to service these needs not just locally but also in the region,” Malana said.
“We are so strategically located that we can become the next regional data center hub. STT GDC Philippines hopes to be front and center, and we want to make this happen,” she said.
STT GDC Philippines currently has five data center facilities in Makati, Quezon City and Cavite, with a combined capacity of 22 megawatts. It is expanding in the next three years, with two major builds initiated this year.
STT Fairview is set to become the country’s biggest data center facility with a capacity of 124 MW once fully built by 2026. Meanwhile, its second facility at STT Cavite, which also broke ground this year, will offer an additional 6 MW.
Data centers are crucial in ensuring smooth and reliable connectivity access, whether for earning, learning, entertainment or enterprise. It is also important in ensuring safe storage of the data of billions of online users.
The data center industry has been growing aggressively at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 14.7 percent since 2022, with the trend forecast to remain until 2030, according to Bloomberg data. It is currently valued at $62.3 billion, with its valuation expected to grow to $89.3 billion by 2030.
About 85 percent of businesses in the Philippines are expected to transition fully to cloud by 2025, according to a survey commissioned by Alibaba Cloud.
Global market research firm International Data Corp., meanwhile, found that the Philippines logged the highest cloud market growth in 2022, as Southeast Asian countries outdid global figures, according to a Nikkei Asia report.
