Supernap of USA planning big data centers in EEC

Supernap, the United States-based builder of data centers, said last week it is betting big on Thailand as the place to begin building its global business, having chosen the Kingdom’s Eastern Economic Corridor for its first facility outside of the U.S.

Supernap International is constructing a 226,000-square-foot data center facility in the Eastern Economic Corridor at an investment of $300 million. The first phase of the project is already underway with workers laying the foundations for the first of three buildings at the cost of $120 million.

Thailand’s embrace of advanced and digital technologies to drive its future economy is providing fertile ground for the services Supernap provides, company executives said. Aside from Thai firms, international firms that are keen to invest in the corridor would be prime prospects for Supernap’s services because of its location at the Hemaraj 2 industrial estate.

“Digital transformation will help accelerate the use of data center services because of growing data demand and computing systems driven by adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics,” said Sunita Bottse, managing director of Supernap Thailand.

The company is already working with seven network telecom providers, and most of its customers are in banking and financial services, with some e-commerce companies also onboard.

Sunita said that Supernap would like to provide its services to government agencies that use data analytics.

“Thailand is a strategic location with lots of space to support the horizontal design of data centers, less risk from natural disasters, and the Thailand 4.0 policy driving digital demand,” she said.

She believes that cloud service providers, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, will be choosing Supernap’s facility to establish edge data centers to reduce the network latency of their Thai customers.

“Edge data centers are a growing trend as more data is kept locally, enabling faster computing and more IoT use cases,” Sunita said.

Supernap International of the U.S. owns 30 percent of Supernap Thailand; True Internet Data Center holds 20 percent, BFKT Thailand and WHA Corporation each hold 15 percent, while Kasikorn Bank and Siam Commercial Bank each own 10 percent. Except for Supernap International all the investors are Thai.