BDx Indonesia has announced a new 100MW data centre campus. The data centre campus, known as CGK5, is to be built on a 12-acre plot that the company acquired from PT Suryacipta Swadaya (Suryacipta). It is located east of Jakarta in the Suryacipta City of Industry, a fully integrated smart industrial estate in Indonesia.
Mayank Srivastava, CEO of BDx and Interim President Director of BDx Indonesia, said, “As we prepare to break ground on our 100MW greenfield Suryacipta campus in this dynamic market, BDx Indonesia upholds its commitment to support Digital Indonesia and continue its rapid journey of expansion and innovation.
“Being the only data center provider offering three availability zones, we are proud to provide our hyperscale and enterprise customers with the highest level of capacity and connectivity, world-class data center operations together with sustainable solutions supporting their growth in this region.”
BDx is rapidly expanding its footprint
BDx Indonesia is a joint venture between Singapore-based BDx, PT Indosat Tbk (Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison), and PT Aplikanusa Lintasarta. CGK5 is the fifth datacentre that BDx has built around Jakarta. It is being marketed to hyperscalers as demand for access to cloud-based computing soars across Indonesia.
BDx is a major player in the region, with ten existing data centres across Asia. Being based in Singapore gives it an advantage in a region where being local is key to doing business. The company claims that CGK5 has been built to meet customer requirements. That suggests that this is not a speculative build but that the company already has tenants for the facility. That is good news because it will begin earning revenue as soon as it is finished.
The press release also claims sustainability is a focus of the design of CGK5. It says that “the facility will leverage a host of innovative technologies to support BDx Indonesia’s ESG goals as well as those of its customers.”
How sustainable and efficient it can be will be critical. Indonesia has a major problem with a large amount of its electricity being generated from coal. The country is still building coal-powered power plants, and BDx Indonesia has yet to say how the energy to be consumed by CGK5 is to be generated.
For multinationals, especially the hyperscalers, this will raise questions for their ESG teams. They cannot simply point elsewhere, nor are activists and their shareholders likely to allow them to do so.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
BDx Indonesia will be pleased to have got this project started. It consolidates its position in Asia’s fast-growing data centre market, especially around Jakarta. It also shows how much demand there is from the hyperscalers as they look to fill customer demand across the region.
However, the big question is the need for more clarity on sustainability. BDx is saying the right things about sustainability but is not providing any evidence to back that up. Will its next move be to announce the building of a solar array similar to the floating array that was just built in Thailand? Or will it announce some other form of green energy initiative?
