Digital Edge (Singapore) Holdings Pte. Ltd. recently established a joint venture in the Philippines with the Threadborne Group, a local family office focused on technology and real estate. The joint venture will construct and operate a 10MW data center in Manila, slated to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2022 and will be the largest operational carrier neutral data center in the Philippines.
The facility will be operated under the Digital Edge brand name and aims to be the most advanced facility in the market, in terms of energy and water efficiency, with an expected annualized PUE of 1.193 at optimal operating temperature and WUE of 1.355. The facility will allow Digital Edge to offer flexible, high-quality colocation and interconnection services to both local and international customers in the Greater Manila region. The low PUE and WUE make the facility uniquely suitable in the market for cloud and other high power density colocation applications.
“The Philippines is an underserved market with huge demand for data center capacity and, together with the Threadborne Group, we intend to be at the forefront of developing the critical data center infrastructure for this market,” said Samuel Lee, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Edge. “The Threadborne Group’s principals are experienced real estate developers with a proven track record, and we are very pleased to have joined forces with them to undertake this important initiative. This venture is another step forward in the Company’s ambition to transform Asia’s digital infrastructure by building and operating the most energy efficient and connectivity-rich data centers in key emerging markets.”
“Digital Edge’s knowledge and experience in designing, constructing, and operating data centers combined with our local real estate and customer knowledge, has created a solid foundation on which to grow this partnership,” said Raymond Rufino, Principal for Investments and Real Estate of the Threadborne Group. “Digital Edge shares our strong conviction for this market and in the importance of setting robust, long-term ESG goals. We are already receiving very positive feedback from a number of potential customers and are confident that this is just the beginning!”
“We are very excited about the energy and water efficiency achieved in the design of the Digital Edge Manila data center. Given Manila’s hot and humid climate, it is extremely difficult to achieve an annualized PUE of 1.193 at the optimal operating temperature, but the team has been able to achieve an impressive result,” said Jay Park, Chief Development Officer of Digital Edge. “The WUE of 1.355 is also significant in that it uses less than a quarter of the water needed for cooling when compared to traditional style cooling tower type setups. These are industry leading numbers. We will be seeking LEED Gold certification, EDGE certification, and participating as an early pilot partner for BERDE (Philippines Local Green Building Certification). This data center will most certainly put the Philippines into the league of having one of the most advanced data centers in Asia.”
