Tech & Sci
20:27, 06-Sep-2018
Facebook to invest $1 billion in its first Asian data center
Updated
20:26, 09-Sep-2018
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Facebook said on Thursday it will invest more than one billion US dollars to build its first data center in Asia in Singapore.
Facebook’s facility will be located in the west of the island, near where Google is expanding its Singapore data centers in an 850-million-US-dollar investment as mobile growth, e-commerce and cloud computing demand rise across the region.
"This will be our first data center in Asia,” Thomas Furlong, Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure data centers, said at a press conference with local authorities in Singapore.
The data center in Singapore will be Facebook's first data center in Asia, and 15th worldwide. /VCG Photo
The data center in Singapore will be Facebook's first data center in Asia, and 15th worldwide. /VCG Photo
He said the facility was expected to open in 2022 depending on the speed of construction. It will be Facebook's 15th data center worldwide.
Facebook said in a statement the 170,000 square meter facility represented an investment of more than 1.4 billion Singapore dollars (one billion US dollars) and would support hundreds of jobs.
It will come with custom features to cope with the steamy temperatures, which rarely drop below 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit).
These include a new state-of-the-art cooling system which uses water rather than air and will work better in the humidity, as well as a building facade made of perforated, lightweight material to allow for better airflow.
The company expects it to be run on 100 percent renewable energy, like its other data centers.
Facebook has a number of data centers in the United States as well as Ireland and Sweden, and it is building a facility in Denmark.
Furlong said Facebook, which has 2.23 billion monthly active users as of the end of June, chose Singapore because of its robust infrastructure, availability of skilled labor and ease of doing business with the government.
(Top image: Facebook said it will invest more than one billion US dollars to build its first data center in Asia in Singapore, slated to open in 2022. /Reuters Photo)
Source(s): AFP
,Reuters