KUALA LUMPUR: The potential total addressable market for ASEAN data centres is estimated to reach US$11 billion (US$1=RM4.20) by 2028 on the back of the global data centre demand boom, according to Maybank Investment Bank (Maybank IB) Bhd.
In its latest ASEAN Data Centre sector report, the research bank said ASEAN-based companies would capture the value under three heads -- data-centre capital expenditure (capex), data-centre operational expenditure (opex), and global data-centre capex.
Maybank IB said the potential revenue opportunity could be derived from US$3 billion in revenue from data-centre capex, US$6 billion in revenue from data-centre opex, and US$3 billion in revenue from global data-centre capex.
"Notably, not all of these revenues will be captured by the ASEAN-based/listed companies, as a major chunk of that opportunity will be captured by the global tech companies.
"However, we note that the ASEAN-based/listed companies in the data centre/tech supply chain in turn would as well benefit from the spurt in global data centre build demand,” it said.
In addition, Maybank IB noted that Southeast Asia has emerged as a top beneficiary of the ‘China Plus One’ strategy, where businesses seek to reduce the risks associated with being entirely reliant on China’s market or supply chain.
It opined that Southeast Asia’s non-aligned position on geopolitics will also help attract data centre builds in the region.
"Besides the reduced risk of getting ensnared in tech and other regulatory restrictions, Southeast Asia offers a friendly business environment for Chinese firms, stemming from warm inter-governmental relations.
"In contrast, governments in other West-leaning jurisdictions have been wary of receiving investments from Chinese tech firms, given national security risks stemming from alleged links to the Chinese government,” it said.
"Thus, besides factors like cost advantage, power availability, user proximity, factors like data sovereignty/sensitivity also play a key role while identifying the location to host data,” it added.
Maybank IB also noted that the geopolitics in submarine cable infrastructure is already visible and could have a spillover effect on ASEAN data centre demand. - Bernama
