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Today, let's talk about Batam and its potential make-or-break moment. Plus, my trip to YTL's massive 600MW data centre campus in Johor got me thinking about the future of data centres in ways I hadn't considered before.
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Batam's moment of truth arrives
BW Digital's event in Singapore.
BW Digital's NDP1 data centre goes live within the next six months, and it could be the first real test of whether the SIJORI concept actually works. I've written about the Singapore-Johor-Riau (SIJORI) growth triangle before - an initiative started years ago to leverage Singapore's business advantages with the manufacturing strength of Johor, Batam, Bintan and Karimun (BBK).
These days, Singapore's Economic Development Board (EDB) calls it SG+. With Singapore's limited data centre capacity, the strategy is to build facilities within a 50-km zone around the island nation. As EDB's Herman Loh observed at BW Digital's event on Thursday, a data centre cluster around Singapore benefits everyone given surging demand for data centres.
From Singapore's perspective, conglomerates or AI startups looking to set up shop in Southeast Asia could distribute workloads across Johor, Singapore or Batam. The roughly 50km distance means negligible latency. With thousands of MWs of capacity and access to dozens of subsea cables across the three markets, I consider SIJORI to be a "super cluster" that can compete with the world's largest data centre hubs.
So where does BW Digital fit in? What started as BW Digital's plan to land a subsea cable at Batam has morphed into a 120MW data centre campus - the largest data centre in Batam. Yes, Golden Digital Gateway is already operational, but that's just 5.2MW for phase 1 with relatively low density per rack.
NDP1 is different. With 24MW of IT capacity in phase one by Q1 2026, support for AI workloads up to 140kW, and direct subsea cable connectivity to Singapore, it offers genuine flexibility for potential customers. The question everyone's asking: Will they come?
The pragmatic truth about data centres
YTL's data centre campus in Johor.
In an earlier post, I wrote that Vantage is now Malaysia's largest data centre operator after acquiring Yondr's 300MW campus. I stand corrected. The single largest operator (and campus) is YTL, which is building a 600MW data centre campus on 2,000 acres at Kulai, Johor. That's just the current phase, with 188MW of IT capacity already handed over or under construction.
I visited the YTL Green Data Center Park earlier this week. As I sped down the main road in a buggy at full tilt, I was acutely aware that the entire stretch on the opposite side - already levelled for future builds - sits empty. You can watch the full 5-minute buggy ride on this blog post here - scroll to the end.
Those few hours on that massive campus, likely Southeast Asia's largest, brought home the stark reality of hyperscale data centres. Less than a decade ago, I worked with YTL's CEO Heng Wai Mun on marketing materials for Singtel's DC West, which he was building then. DC West was Singapore's largest data centre at the time; today, it would be the second smallest facility in YTL's Johor campus.
That trip had me thinking about what these massive facilities really represent. With all the headlines and hype, we tend to romanticise data centres - their cutting-edge cooling, their massive scale, their role in the AI revolution. But strip away the narrative and these facilities exist for one reason: to serve businesses with digital infrastructure needs.
At its core, the data centre is just another business. There are investors expecting returns, operators managing margins, and customers comparing costs. Customers don't want to spend if they don't have to. But if they must, they will choose technologies and systems that best meet their needs.
Data centres don't evolve based on what's technically possible, they evolve based on what customers need and will pay for.
Have you heard anything?
In recent weeks, I've heard from at least two different sources about severe networking challenges in Johor. Is this something you've encountered? Drop me a note if you have first-hand (or reliable second-hand) information on this. Your identity will remain confidential.
As usual, you can reach me by hitting reply.
Regards, Paul Mah.
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Spotlight
Inside YTL's massive 600MW data centre campus
Johor campus reveals how hyperscale changes everything about data centre design.
