Equinix to invest $115 million in new data centre in Japan

US-headquartered data centre company, Equinix, has announced its 15th international business exchange (IBX) data centre in Tokyo, Japan. The company said that it has made an initial investment of $115 million on the new data centre, touted TY15.   

Scheduled to open in H2 2024, the first phase of TY15 will provide an initial capacity of approximately 1,200 cabinets, and 3,700 cabinets when fully built out.

The company said that the new data centre is strategically located adjacent to the existing network and cloud dense IBX campus in Tokyo, within 1-1.5-kilometre proximity, and is designed to strengthen connectivity for global cloud and network service providers, as well as enterprises, enabling them to scale up and empower Japan’s booming digital economy.  

According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2023, a market study recently announced by Equinix, Tokyo continues to lead the Asia-Pacific region in interconnection growth and is forecast to reach 1,758 terabytes per second (TBps) by 2025, with approximately 40% of the bandwidth driven by cloud and network service providers.  

Further, market research firm, International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that Japan’s domestic public cloud service market in 2022 is expected to increase by 29.8% from the previous year to 2,159.4 billion yen, and the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2021 to 2026 will remain at 20.8%, reaching 4,279.5 billion yen in 2026.  

“Our further investment in Japan reflects the growing demand for digitisation as the Asia-Pacific market rapidly outpaces the global average in hybrid cloud adoption,” said Jeremy Deutsch, President at Equinix Asia-Pacific. 

“TY15 will expand the capacity and range of services Equinix can provide for our customers and partners as they seek to expand their digital footprint in the Asia-Pacific region supporting the key market of Tokyo,” added Deutsch. 

Globally, Equinix operates more than 245 data centres across 71 cities, providing digital infrastructure for more than 10,000 of the world’s leading businesses. In Asia-Pacific, Equinix has 52 data centres in key cities across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore. In October, Equinix also announced plans for an approximately $74 million IBX data centre in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.  

Besides Japan, India too is a strategic market for Equinix, the company said in an earlier interview with Mint, adding that it has planned significant expansion into the Indian data centre market. In 2021, Equinix acquired GPX data centres. Then, the company pledged that it would invest $86 million into the expansion of its Mumbai market, with a third data centre scheduled to be built there, alongside another location planned in Chennai.   

Currently, India ranks as the world’s 14th largest data centre market, with over 100 data centres.   

In fact, according to research conducted by Arizton, India’s data centre market was valued at $4.35 billion in 2021. But, by 2027, this valuation is predicted to rise to $10.09 billion, a 132% increase in just six years.