STT GDC Philippines opens Makati Data Hall Facility
ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) Philippines has opened its refurbished facility in Makati City.
Data Hall F of STT Makati (previously known as Globe MK2 Data Centre), was renovated as a part of STT GDC’s ambition to widen its service offerings, to meet clients' data needs.
How STT GDC can make the Philippines the preferred location for hyperscalers across Southeast Asia
The opening ceremony was attended by several key executives, all led by Makati City Mayor Abigail Binay and Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan John Uy.
During the event, Ernest Cu, Globe President and CEO and STT GDC Philippines Board Director, spoke about STT GDC Philippines’ dream of turning the Philippines into a preferred location for hyperscalers in Southeast Asia, driving digitalisation and uplifting the lives of Filipinos by creating more opportunities for them.
“Our mission is to enable our digital future not only in the Philippines but across the world. Our reputation is built on delivering what we promise, a principle that remains central to our strategy,” said Carlo Malana, President and CEO of STT GDC Philippines. “At STT GDC, we don’t just articulate our vision — we ensure that our partners and customers can count on us to execute with precision and reliability.”
Malana is clearly passionate about improving digital infrastructure in his home country, having spent more than 20 years in the US and Mexico before returning in late 2019 to work at Globe Telecom. While this move was in part driven by a desire to be closer to his family, he was also looking for an opportunity to make a difference in the future of the country he loves.
President and CEO Carlo Malana tell us how ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (Philippines) is transforming the country
With the Philippine digital industry set to grow at a projected CAGR of 20% through 2030, STT GDC Philippines’ President and CEO Carlo Malana says he is seeing growing demand for high-quality co-location services as both cloud service providers and enterprises alike continually expand their business platforms.
Despite only forming in 2022, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres is embracing the challenge.
In a previous interview, Data Centre magazine caught up with Carlo to hear more.
“It all happened quite fast, we were essentially a startup,” Carlo said. “In 2023, we got real traction and set about changing the company. We started creating most of our capabilities in-house, adapting processes so we could make decisions faster and rapidly respond to customer demands.
“We created a framework where we were able to do things that were simply not possible in the old infrastructure. Some customers say we are doing what they thought was impossible, and so we've made that part of our DNA. We want to be a company that is trusted, easy to deal with, and can be banked on to deliver on the promises that we make.”
Just a year after the company was formed, STT GDC Philippines became the most interconnected, carrier-neutral data centre in the country. Not just that, but the STT Fairview data centre campus proved to be a step change.
“In a country where a 6MW data centre was once considered large and most were around 2MW or 3MW, we came along announcing 124MW,” said Carlo.
The Philippines is set to benefit from even greater connectivity thanks to additional subsea cables (the physical wires that make up the internet) connecting the country to the US west coast.
With this increased connectivity and ramping up of data centre capacity, Carlo believes that the Philippines could become an alternative regional hub for hyperscalers looking to tackle concerns in traditional strongholds such as lack of space in Singapore or geopolitics in Hong Kong.
“With the investments that STT GDC Philippines is making, we aim to play a significant role in developing the nation’s digital future,” he said. “Here we are building one data centre campus that is going to be twice the existing capacity of the entire country, because we want to make sure we have the scale. One of the key things for global cloud providers is that they want to see a runway – they want to see the ability to scale when they look at viable locations.”
Malana is confident though that these hurdles can be overcome and that STT GDC Philippines can help transform the Philippines into one of the major emerging data centre hubs, alongside established players like Singapore and Indonesia in Southeast Asia.
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