Johor/Iskandar reveal benefits as datacenter location for investment and outsourcing

LONDON, UK; As investment agencies worldwide turn their attention to promoting the benefits of their locations for building datacenters or outsourcing, a new player in south-east Asia - Johor - has entered this increasingly competitive arena.

Next month, government, businesses and international experts will gather in Johor for a regional enterprise datacenter conference (www.datacentresasia.com) and the Iskandar Regional Development Authority will make its claim as the next big datacenter opportunity for the expanding sector in south-east Asia.

Johor's geographic position at the tip of Malaysia on the opposite side of the Singapore Straits provides easy access from the island state and importantly offers a wealth of land. In support of its vision, the conference will hear from representatives of Telekom Malaysia to discuss fiber connectivity, the local power company to speak about the critical issue of energy supply and from the government agency MDeC responsible for driving inward investment in the tech sector.

The conference to be held in Johor on 26 March, is enhanced by the presence of a range of international experts including William Barney, CEO, Reliance Globalcom, Kris Kumar, Senior Vice President and Regional Head Asia Pacific, Digital Realty, Fumitoshi, Imaizumi, President and CEO, NTT MSC, Markku Lepisto, Technology Evangelist, APAC, Amazon Web Services, Mark Thiele, EVP, Data Center Technologies, Switch, Paul-Francois Cattier, Global Vice President, Datacenter, Schneider Electric, Bob Sharon, Founder and CEO, Green Global Consulting and others. Datacenter service providers from Malaysia, Singapore and other south-east Asian countries are also participating.

An objective of the conference is to provide a current assessment of the datacenter sector in the region, new business opportunities, how far the sector has moved in valuations, current and future risk, and forward outlook for IT infrastructure assets. It covers cloud - and legal certainty for cloud services - finance and investment, new technological innovation such as prefabricated datacenters, datacenter megatrends and a special panel on enterprise criteria in selecting sites for datacenter locations. Datuk Ismail bin Ibrahim, Chairman, Iskandar Regional Development Authority will also present the vision for a new digital park in the region.

"The conference presents a much needed opportunity for datacenter businesses and investors to gather in south-east Asia and assess opportunities outside of Singapore, so far the dominant market in the region," commented Steve Wallage, Managing Director, BroadGroup Consulting and chairman of the conference. "Growth in the datacenter sector has been sustained globally and our forecasts suggest tremendous expansion in south-east Asia in the coming years. Johor's proximity to Singapore and the availability of land will certainly present a powerful proposition."