PLDT Inc. said it is prioritizing data centers as a core pillar of its growth strategy, driven by rising data storage needs.
PLDT chief operating officer Menardo Jimenez identified data center expansion as a major growth driver for the company, as the exponential surge in data storage processing demands require robust and efficient data center infrastructure.
“We have already built 10 [data centers] and are finishing our eleventh and biggest facility, which shows how strongly we believe that data centers are an important part of PLDT’s revenue growth,” Jimenez said, adding that the company has seen “healthy growth rates” for their data center business over the last five years.
PLDT, through its subsidiary ePLDT, established itself as a leader in the Philippines’ data center industry.
The company operates a network of VITRO Data Centers, offering a suite of solutions that cater to customers’ growing IT outsourcing requirements. Among these facilities, the VITRO Sta. Rosa Data Center stands out as the largest and most advanced in the country, and is envisioned to be the Philippines’ AI hub, forming the first AI ecosystem in the country.
Jimenez sees data sovereignty laws as the next major inflection point, noting that once the government enforces localized data storage regulations, it would significantly boost the demand for domestic data centers.
“The next big inflection point for our data centers is for the government to start instituting data sovereignty laws. We are preparing for that, as it will be a big boost to the data centers,” he said.
PLDT is also preparing for the AI-powered future by offering GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) to meet the rising demand for high-performance computing driven by AI and machine learning adoption.