Singapore as a Hub of Global Data Center

Taken from enterpriseinnovation.net 's article:
Coming to Singapore: A global IT company's CEO moves to Asia
By Rahul Joshi | 2015-04-13


Talks to CEO George Slessman about his move as well as the company division

IO, a company that offers 'Data Center as a Service', is the sixth largest data centre provider in the world. IO first opened its Singapore office in September 2013 to serve the APAC region - this was its first office outside of the US. Since then, the company has been steadily ramping up its activities in Asia, and this year the CEO has made the unconventional decision - to relocate to Singapore.

Also recently, the company split into two units - IO, which, will continue to handle colocation and cloud services,and a new company, BASELAYER, which will comprise IO’s modular data center hardware and data center infrastructure management software.

We are deeply committed to the ASEAN region and Singapore. We believe it will be the largest growth market for IO in the next five years. In fact, my wife and I recently moved to Singapore because I see incredible opportunity to grow and expand the IO footprint throughout Asia. We plan to have the majority of our business operations and R&D located in Singapore over the next five years.

The significant growth opportunity in the ASEAN region combined with Singapore’s robust ecosystem, pro-business environment, stable geopolitical landscape and high-technology infrastructure set the stage for our success in Asia.

Singapore has a relatively mature data center market compared to other countries in Asia, yet it has extraordinary growth and development ahead. It has low risk of natural disaster and is located within 50 milliseconds of Hong Kong and 75 milliseconds of Tokyo – other two major financial centers in Asia. That makes Singapore a strategic connector for Asia.

The financial services industry is a target vertical market for IO. Singapore is the fast growing FI hub in the world today, which was a key reason for IO’s move to Singapore. In addition, the broader growth dynamics in the region made Southeast Asia a natural next step for IO’s global expansion. Singapore’s technology ecosystem is also superior compared to other markets in the region due to the demand from multinational companies that have been operating in Singapore.

In addition, technology providers thrive in stable geopolitical environments. Singapore consistently outperforms its peers in that area as the government is highly supportive of building a vibrant infocomms ecosystem, and strengthening Singapore’s position as a data management hub through pro-development policies and rigorous R&D. These were all key considerations that resulted in us selecting Singapore as the first IO data center in Asia.

Innovation has been core to Singapore’s competitive success, and we’re starting to see more tech start-ups, patents and entrepreneurs coming out of Singapore. The local government agencies are creating and enabling an environment for innovation to take place.

The past few years have seen unprecedented economic growth in Asia, with low-cost capital and low-cost energy further driving interest and development. My prediction is that, one year beyond its IPO, Alibaba will be one of if not the largest companies in the world, representing the definitive move of the Internet's center to Asia. What Intel did for Silicon Valley, Alibaba is doing for Asia.

In Asia, failure is seen as exactly that—something to be avoided and a stain on a businessperson’s reputation. In America there is a very different attitude toward failure. For every high-tech business success in Silicon Valley, there are countless failures.

The key is to walk the line between vision and being able to execute. You have to have a healthy fear of failing that drives you—not paralyzes you—to be more persistent, to work harder than the next person.