The Cloud: Hong Kong's Third Dimension...

DATA centres have become a major world industry, and Hong Kong and the GBA are strategically-placed to help meet growing demand through the region in a market described by AirTrunk's Robin Khuda as "fantastic" . . . 

HAVING recently launched its first facility in Hong Kong, the Sydney-based data centre operator and owner, AirTrunk, is already starting to weigh up expansion opportunities.

Robin Khuda, founder and chief executive officer of AirTrunk, says that, despite a difficult year in 2020, its first data centre in Hong Kong was completed in record time.

He describes the market environment in Hong Kong and the adjacent Greater Bay Area as "fantastic", and says: "We are looking to further expand into Hong Kong and the GBA. 

"We went through the COVID lockdowns and there could not have been more challenges. There were a lot of disruptions with supply chain." 

AirTrunk's US$150-million hyperscale data centre in Hong Kong opened in early December as part of its Asia-Pacific expansion effort. AirTrunk was assisted in its entry into Hong Kong by InvestHK.

The new 20+ megawatt (MW) facility, known as AirTrunk HKG1, emerged from the retrofitting of an existing eight-storey building near Tsuen Wan, and is specifically designed for hyperscale cloud, content and enterprise customers.

AirTrunk is the first Australian data centre business to open a facility in Hong Kong. HKG1's sister site in Singapore, SGP1, opened on the same day as HKG1. The company regards the opening of HKG1 as a key milestone in the expansion of its regional platform. 

Khuda says: "Hong Kong is strategic for us. It is a major hub for international connectivity with many  undersea cables, connecting to China and other surrounding markets such as the Philippines and North Asia. 

"So it is a key hub, and that is why we selected Hong Kong. It is a very stable location,  has an educated labour force, and customers trust doing business in Hong Kong and the
Greater Bay.

"In Hong Kong, we now service some of the largest global technology players, who offer digital services to support, for example, online learning, enterprise adoption of cloud and IoT (the Internet of Things)." 

Khuda says AirTrunk has been a beneficiary of COVID-19 because of an acceleration in the take-up of technology, and a switch to doing business and learning digitally.

The change caused by pandemic lockdowns has accelerated further the already record levels of demand for hyperscale data infrastructure across the Asia-Pacific region, he says. 

"Demand for data centres comes from exponential growth in cloud services. Everything is stored in 'clouds', but the reality is that the cloud is a physical facility -- that information is stored in a physical data centre."

AirTrunk, now 88%-owned by a consortium managed by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA), designs and builds data centres for some of the world's largest technology companies.

"I founded the company in 2015 because I could see the opportunity in Asia," says Khuda. "It has a huge population and digital consumption is rising rapidly. For example, a company like TikTok has more users than YouTube.

"On Singles Day (11.11) in China last year, the combined value of sales was US$115 billion. The growth of data in Asia, including China, presents huge opportunity for digital infrastructure developers."

Since Macquarie invested the company in 2020, AirTrunk has been on a fast track to grow its presence in Asia-Pacific. It is already one of the largest data centre providers in the region.

Currently, it owns and operates six facilities in four Tier One markets -- in Sydney
and Melbourne in Australia, in Hong Kong
and Singapore.

It will launch in Tokyo by the end of 2021, taking its offering to some 750MW of total data capacity across the platform.