Vantage Data Centers expands into Taiwan with a 16MW data center

Vantage Data Centers is building a 16MW data center in Taipei, which marks the company's entry into the robust Taiwanese data center market.

Set to open in mid-2024, the new 20,000-square-meter facility brings the company to its eighth campus in the Asia-Pacific as it continues to expand its footprint in the region.

Vantage said the Taiwanese capital serves as an ideal base of its latest expansion because of the city's rich connectivity ecosystem and submarine cable access.

Dubbed as TPE1, the new five-story facility sits on a one-hectare lot, just 35 minutes from the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

''Taipei is a prime location to serve customers across Asia as demand across the region continues to skyrocket, especially given the use of modern technologies such as AI,'' said Raymond Tong, president, APAC, at Vantage.

According to the latest figures from ResearchAndMarkets,  the Taiwan data center market is poised for remarkable growth, projected to surge from $1.42 billion in 2022 to $3.21 billion by 2028, at a substantial CAGR of 14.57%.

Dominated by local telecom operators like Chunghwa Telecom and Chief Telecom, the market also attracts new investors such as Vantage Data Centers, Empyrion DC and SC Zeus Data Centers, adding to the market's competitiveness in terms of colocation space supply.

"With global cloud service providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure investing to expand their presence in the country, the Taiwan data center market is poised for an exciting phase of growth and increased opportunities in the near future," the research firm said in a statement.

Sustainable by design

According to ResearchAndMarkets, the Taiwanese government's emphasis on adopting sustainable energy sources to combat emissions and meet the country's rising power demand further propels the data center industry forward.

With this in mind, Vantage is aligning its strategy with the local government's focus on sustainable energy sources.

The TPE1 campus will be constructed in accordance with Vantage's "sustainable by design" blueprint for energy-efficient operations to deliver power usage effectiveness (PUE) and water usage effectiveness (WUE).

The campus will be powered by Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), the local utility provider, which says it is actively developing renewable energy and committed to introducing low-carbon, clean energy. Vantage says TPE1 will offer redundancies across all systems to ensure uninterrupted uptime.

''Leveraging a skilled workforce, we look forward to opening the doors of this facility to continue building Taiwan's digital hub and contributing to the market's ongoing technological growth in sustainable ways," said Tong.

"Vantage fully supports the government's focus in adopting sustainable resources, and we are committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions across our global portfolio by 2030," he added.

Asia-Pacific expansion

Vantage has been strengthening its market position in Asia-Pacific over the last 12 months.

Last month, the company brought senior leadership in the region with the appointment of Tong and Chief Financial Officer Joel Cheah. Both based in Singapore, the two executives are tasked with pursuing new areas of growth by driving the creation of digital hubs across the region to support technological advancements.

Currently, the company has more than 200 employees across eight cities in Asia-Pacific and anticipates adding 80 new roles by the end 2023.

In May, Vantage announced the development of a second data center campus (KUL2) in Cyberjaya with an additional planned US$3 billion (RM13.32 billion) investment. Upon completion, the KUL2 campus will deliver 256MW of IT capacity to meet the growing customer demand for hyperscale data center services.