Insights

Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau, also known as The Greater Bay Area (GBA), is an important hub for the development of the digital economy in China. As an integral part of the “New Digital Infrastructure” agenda, the GBA focuses on the development of applications such as “industrial IoT” and “hyperscale data centres” and is primed to help place China on the world map for digital development.

China's Digital Infrastructure Boom

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, cloud applications in China such as residents' personal health code and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) have led to a surge in internet traffic. According to national statistics, China’s mobile internet traffic in January and February 2020 hit 23.5 billion gigabytes, an increase of 44.2% over the same period in 2019. While epidemic prevention and control is priority, the Chinese government also continues to promote the rapid development of the “New Infrastructure Creation” policy, which includes digital infrastructure.

^{Caption: Aerial view of the Huizhou Data Centre}

Data centres form the backbone of the digital economy. With the development of cloud computing, hyperscale data centres offer highly virtualized "cloud ecosystems" such as servers, storage, networks, and applications. Faced with this huge data processing demand, data centre campuses have become mainstream. In March 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission of China announced an increase in investments into 5G networks and data centres to bolster economic recovery and to lay the foundations for hi-tech transformation and upgrading. 

With the emergence of various policy support for China’s digitalisation, Keppel Data Centres (Keppel DC) has expanded in Southern China to support the burgeoning digital economy. As the main designer, developer and operator of colocation data centres in Asia-Pacific and Europe, Keppel DC is committed to providing the industry with solutions to improve its energy efficiency, deliver safety, and develop a sustainable digital future. With presence in key metros such as Singapore, Sydney, Jakarta, Frankfurt and Dublin, Keppel DC continues to grow its global footprint to support the business needs of its customers.  

Development of the Huizhou Data Centre

Huizhou is one of the key megacities that form the Greater Bay Area. It is located in a strategic location, well-connected to its neighbouring technology and financial hubs;  Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. In July 2020, Alpha Data Centre Fund (Alpha DC Fund), a subsidiary of Keppel Corporation, marked its foray into the GBA with an investment of approximately RMB 1.5 billion to develop a greenfield purpose-built hyperscale data centre in Tonghu Smart City in Huizhou, Guangdong Province. With a total development potential of 1,024,900 sq ft, the Huizhou Data Centre holds the China Data Centre Class A GB-standard equivalent specifications.

Keppel DC will partner Shenzhen Huateng Smart Technology Co, Ltd (Huateng Co.), a local data centre operator, to implement global best practices for data centre operations in the Huizhou Data Centre. This includes a technology roadmap to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies into the daily operations and management of data centres. This will leverage advanced sensor networks and big data analysis to perform predictive maintenance of its data centre infrastructure, resulting in improved operational reliability.

As of December 2020, the roof of the 4-storey international data centre has been installed. The project has crossed 170,000 man-hours with a record of zero lost-time incidents. In its first phase of delivery in Q3 2021, more than 6,000 high-density racks will be available.

Find out more about Huizhou Data Centre 

This article is a summary of an article that was published on Sohu.

^{Caption: Construction progress of the Huizhou Data Centre}