Data center growth drives need for secure, risk-assessed land — STT GDC

By Beatriz Marie D. Cruz, Reporter

THE GROWING data center industry in the Philippines is increasing demand for land that meets strict safety and infrastructure standards, according to ST Telemedia Global Data Centres Philippines (STT GDC), a provider of data center services supporting cloud, digital, and enterprise solutions.

“As you start looking at data centers and compare it with the other countries, there’s going to be a demand for land that meets our data center risk assessment criteria,” Carlomagno E. Malana, president and chief executive officer of STT GDC Philippines, told reporters on the sidelines of a March 6 briefing.

“When you build a data center, you have to still figure out whether where you’re building is the right place to build, are you on a fault line, are you [prone to] flooding… it will likely increase demand for those types of land.”

The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has been driving demand for data centers in the Philippines, which could bolster growth in the country’s property sector, according to Leechiu Property Consultants (LPC).

However, the Philippines remains the most disaster-prone country in the world amid high exposure to flooding and earthquakes, according to the World Risk Index.

In 2024, the Philippines’ data center capacity stood at about 182.2 megawatts (MW), according to LPC. It estimates an additional 1,364 MW in power capacity in the pipeline.

The building of a data center also hingers on whether it can reach high client occupancy, Mr. Malana added.

“Data centers are like real estate, you have to fill it with clients,” Mr. Malana added. “It also has to be somewhere where our clients would want to locate, because when we put clients here, they bring their computers, but they also bring people that work on the computers.”

STT GDC Philippines is Globe Telecom, Inc.’s joint venture with Ayala Corp. and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres.

The company operates a total of seven data centers in the Philippines, with a combined IT (information technology) load of 150 MW.

Its two upcoming data centers in Fairview and Cavite are on track for customer access by June and October, respectively.

“We’re doing a lot of testing already, we call it the commissioning process where we start activating all our mechanical, electrical [systems,]” Mr. Malana said, referring to the Fairview STT. “In a few weeks, a client will start moving in their equipment.”

LIQUID COOLINGAlso on Thursday last week, STT GDC unveiled the country’s first liquid cooling technology showroom for data centers, in response to the rise of AI and high-performance computing.

The AI Synergy Lab, launched in collaboration with Dell Technologies, Inc., Novare Technologies, Inc., and Vertiv Philippines, Inc., specializes in direct-to-chip liquid cooling catered to high-density servers.

Direct liquid cooling is a technique that circulates liquid into the heat-generating components of a device such as graphics processing units and central processing units. It has become a viable alternative to air cooling especially for high-density and high-performance servers.

The showroom features a Dell PowerEdge server designed to support graphics processing unit intensive applications. It is cooled by Vertiv’s Liebert® XDU100 coolant distribution units, its direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology.

This ensures greater computational density, improved server performance, intelligent energy efficiency, and increased sustainability.

Under a typical application of AI serves in a data center, liquid cooling technologies remove about 80% of heat in AI servers, while air cooling removes the remaining 20% of heat generated.

The newest generation of chips coming out this year are specked at a 130-150 kilowatt per rack, Mr. Malana told the briefing. “So, you can’t just use air [cooling] anymore, you have to use liquid [cooling.]”