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Google announced the start of construction on its data center in Singapore, its first in Southeast Asia, breaking ground on the new facility with Singapore government representatives, recipient of the company’s first community grant and the regional leadership team. The groundbreaking ceremony took place at the 2.45 hectare site of the planned facility, located in Jurong West.

 

Google’s investment in the facility will reach US$120 million. The company is still working to finalize staffing needs, but when operational, this facility will provide jobs for a small team of full time staff and contractors in a variety of roles including computer technicians, electrical and mechanical engineers, and catering and security staff. 

 

The Singapore facility is also one of three announced earlier by Google in the region who recently had a groundbreaking ceremony for its Hong Kong facility with plans in the pipeline for another in Taiwan.

 

Julian Persaud, head of Google Southeast Asia, said: “Building this first data center in Southeast Asia is an exciting step and an important investment, reaching US$120 million, in better serving our users across the region. More new users are coming online every day in Asia than anywhere else in the world. They are looking for information and entertainment, new business opportunities and better ways to connect with friends and family, near and far. We’re building to provide our users here with the fastest and most reliable possible access to all our services, so they can do just that.”

 

While unable to name the specific services that the company would run out of the data center, Persaud said that the proximity of the new data centers to the growing technology savvy users in Asia would drastically improve their user experience of Google based services.

 

The company is now working to hire the leadership team for the facility and will continue to hire as construction progresses.

Google claims the facility will be one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly in Asia, built to the same high standards it uses around the world, with each element custom designed to operate at optimal efficiency.

 

According to Simon Chang, director of Google’s hardware operations in Asia, “Singapore’s year-round heat and humidity offer an exciting challenge for our data center design team, but I am happy to confirm that its innovative design will make it one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly in Asia. One way we’ll achieve region leading efficiency here is by custom designing each element of the facility to operate at optimal efficiency, but we are also looking at incorporating some of the efforts we use across our data center fleet.”

 

Chang added that the company's data centers in Europe were able to achieve Power usage effectiveness (PUE) of around 1.2 (the ideal being 1.0), and the company was looking into building designs that would allow them to achieve that in Singapore.