Equinix, a digital infrastructure company, has announced its plans to open its first data center in Kuala Lumpur in the first quarter of 2024. This follows the company's announcement last year of its intention to enter the Malaysian market with a data center in Johor.
The company identified Malaysia as one of the fastest-growing data center markets in the ASEAN region, driven by strong cloud growth, e-commerce adoption and continued investment in 5G. Much of the development in this sector is concentrated in Johor and Kuala Lumpur.
Equinix plans to expand its digital infrastructure capacity in Malaysia to meet the increasing demand from local and global companies. This expansion aligns with the Malaysian government's MyDIGITAL blueprint, which aims to establish Malaysia as a hub for colocation in ASEAN and a regional digital economic powerhouse. The new facility, KL1, will be located in Cyberjaya, a government-designated zone to promote and boost Malaysia's digital economy.
The company is set to launch the first phase of KL1 early next year, which will offer an initial capacity of 450 cabinets and colocation space of 1,300 square meters. Once fully constructed, the data center will provide a total of 900 cabinets and colocation space of 2,630 square meters.
KL1 will allow global networks, content providers and enterprises to exchange large amounts of internet traffic through the Equinix Internet Exchange. They currently operate 51 data centers in 13 cities across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore in the Asia-Pacific region, with plans to expand in Indonesia and Malaysia.
