KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 10): Malaysia’s relatively limited choice of locations for data centre development, coupled with rising operating costs, could affect its ability to compete with regional markets such as Thailand and Indonesia, industry players said.
Speaking at Bursa Malaysia’s Sectorial Series, Powering the AI Era — Watt Next?, IVPS Malaysia (Cushman & Wakefield) managing director and country manager Tiffany Goh said Malaysia’s data centre clusters were relatively concentrated compared to regional peers, with the majority located in Johor.
She noted that Thailand offered developers more options in terms of power providers and Indonesia had a wider geographical spread of potential sites.
Malaysia’s constraints include the availability of power and water, as well as the distance between suitable locations, she said.
Greater Kuala Lumpur remains attractive because of its existing infrastructure while Johor continues to be another key data centre hub, said Isaac Goh, general manager of data centre architecture and delivery of TM Global — the wholesale domestic and international business arm of Telekom Malaysia Bhd (KL:TM).
Northern states could also offer opportunities, although latency, which is the time taken for data to travel between locations, may be a consideration that may prove to be an obstacle for certain workloads, he said.
Isaac said latency of between seven and nine milliseconds could be suitable for some applications, including AI training, but AI inference may require a lower range of about five to six milliseconds.
The comments were made during a panel discussion titled Malaysia’s Data Centre Boom: Sustaining Growth in the Next Phase, which was moderated by Macquarie utilities and construction analyst Colin Lee.