The pandemic-driven rise of data centres

MANY are now familiar with the massive acceleration of digitalisation that defined 2020. As Covid-19 spread across the globe, businesses had to quickly move their activities online while people sought new ways to work, learn and relax as countries moved into lockdown and governments implemented social-distancing measures. This shift to a digital-first behaviour resulted in the growth of applications and connectivity tools that enabled people to continue working, schooling, shopping and staying entertained from home.

In Asia-Pacific, the e-commerce, gaming and video streaming sectors, which were already displaying strong performance before the pandemic, saw continued growth with more people turning to digital services as a result of social distancing measures. At the same time, the pandemic also forced governments and enterprises to transform and adapt their delivery of critical goods and services, bringing forward their adoption of Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies that rely on the collection and analysis of data, fuelling a surge in demand for high-performance computing infrastructure.

NEXT WAVE OF DATA CENTRE DEMAND