Together with local partner Threadborne Group, Singapore-based data center company Digital Edge starts its expansion in the Philippines. The joint venture will see the construction of 10MW data center in Manila, with a capital commitment in excess of $100 million collectively from both parties.

The new data center will be based on Digital Edge’s next-generation architecture and operated under the Digital Edge brand name. The Manila data center is slated to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2022. It is expected to be the largest operational carrier-neutral data center in the Philippines.

“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, CEO 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.”

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“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,” Digital Edge said in a media advisory.

Quoting a study by Structure Research, Digital Edge said the Philippines’ colocation market is expected to become a $313 million market by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 22% between 2021 and 2026.

“Alibaba Cloud is currently the first and only hyperscale cloud platform to announce a cloud region deployment in Manila, Philippines,” said Jabez Tan, head of Research at Structure Research, “And we believe more cloud region announcements will soon follow in the next two years driven by the overall decentralization of hyperscale cloud platforms into more distributed and in-country data center architectures to cater for the increasing performance requirements and data privacy regulations.

“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.