In conversation with Mr. Charlie Chairatanatrai, Certified Data Centre Expert and General Manager, Bridge Data Centers, Thailand, we made an attempt to understand the Data Center Market in Thailand and the major drivers and upcoming trends in the industry.

“Growing at a steady rate, Thailand has the potential to become a prominent Data Center Hub in Southeast Asia in near future”

Q1. What have been the trends governing the Data Center market of Thailand in the past few years and how has it grown?

There are internet Service Providers in Thailand from a very long time who required their own machine rooms for hosting services such as e-mail hosting, web hosting, etc. This brought up the notion of Data Centers as well. There we around 10 Data Centers in Thailand in the late 90s era. With the inception of new Data Centers in past decade, the market has observed a steep growth lately. The Thailand Data Center Market is expected to have a growth rate of around 3% in pre-covid era while the market is speculated to be growing around 5% CAGR in recent times.

Q2. As per our research, the overall Data Center market in Thailand has 30+ Data Centers providing co-location services. What is your opinion about the same?

Many of the Data Centers operating in the market are Thailand based. There are now around 20 operators in the country providing Data Centers in the range of 30-40 facilities across the Thailand. New market entrants namely NTT Global, ST Telemedia, AIMS are the emerging players and gaining popularity in the market. The primary reason for the recent growth in the market is the post Covid-19 development in the country as well as the recent suspension of building Data Centers in Singapore. As these factors are paving the road for new data centers, Thailand is also expected to add more Data Centers in coming years.

Q3. What are the major end users for the Data Center Market in Thailand?

Before the international players entered into the market, BFSI and Government sector are the major end users for the Data Center Market. The primary reason being the security and requirement for an uninterrupted power supply for maintaining stability of operations, hence generating more demand. The E-commerce, IT/ITES on the other hand have significantly lower share. Thailand have less number of IT and E-commerce companies in comparison to other SEA countries, hence indicating the lower demand for data center services.

Q4. Out of the different services provided by Data Centers, such as Co-location, Managed and Hyperscale, which services are currently witnessing faster growth and rising adoption in the industry?

With the rise in the number of Data Centers, the market has been providing the majority of the services as colocation services to the end users. The ratio of the Co-location services is about 70%-75% currently in comparison to other services. However, within the upcoming years, the ratio would change drastically as more number of hyperscales are expected in the few years.

Q5. How do you see the market growing in the near future, say 5 years?

Thailand is located in the center of South East Asian region. In comparison to the growing Cloud Market, the Data Center market is also forecasted to grow over the next few years, as there will be more Data Centers, especially the international brands. The operators are still expanding their current facilities in the country. As the cloud adoption is increasing, AWS and other cloud brands are expected to enter in the next year. After Indonesia and Malaysia, Thailand is also looked upon as a major Data Center Hub in near future. One of the challenge the market face is the increase in tariff and electricity as it would directly influence the consumption of services, but still Thailand market would be lucrative enough to generate more revenue.

For more insights on the market intelligence, refer to the link below:-

Thailand Data Center and Cloud Services Market