Thailand Data Center Market: Investment and Growth Opportunity Analysis, 2019-2028

Thailand data centers market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 25% in the period of 2022-2028. The country has over 48 million internet users and this number is expected to rise in the near future as a result of digitalization. Reliance on digital infrastructure for a growing population and economy is increasing in the country, and several foreign players are penetrating in the country to provide cloud solutions to the regional market.

Thailand offers opportunities to enter the data center market that are highly sought-after by both domestic and foreign investors. Significant capital inflow has been directed to this asset class by corporate investors, private equity firms, pension and infrastructure funds, and sovereign wealth funds. Investors interested in this fast-growing sector should consider a number of important tax and legal structuring aspects to optimize their investment value.

Bangkok’s data center sector is dominated by a mix of international operators and local players, such as True IDC, Japanese operator NTT, Switch’s SUPERNAP Thailand, Singapore-based STT GDC, CSL, and others. Since 2016, the Bank of Investment (BOI) has announced an incentive scheme for data centers that passed certain criteria with an 8-year Corporate Income Tax (CIT) exemption without a cap, attracting more capital investment into the country.

Rising data traffic and investment promotion indicate potential growth opportunity

The new colocation developments will be more resilient to the costly downtime that some businesses are currently witnessing due to hosting their data ‘on-premise’. The rapid increase in investment is expected to be attested to the future growth of the data center market and are therefore securing sizeable land plots that can accommodate the multi-megawatt leasing deals that the likes of Tencent, Amazon, and Microsoft require to operate their Cloud platforms in the country.

In Q1 2022, Bangkok recorded an increase of 5 MW capacity, attributable mainly to public Cloud deployments, whilst the total yearly take-up for 2021 was 14.32 MW which represents a nearly 900% increase on 2020 take-up. This is mainly due to the increased focus of hyper-scale cloud service providers to reinforce their presence in the regional market. Also, with NTT announcing the expansion of its Bangkok facility, the aggregate current supply increased slightly to 147 MW.

Futuristic market growth is characterized by a plan to advance the data center industry through some of the developments taking place in the country:

• Etix Everywhere after acquiring the majority stake in Genesis Data Center’s 2.4 MW facility.
• Singtel, a Singapore telecommunications provider, has signed a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) with Thailand’s Gulf Energy and local telco Advanced Info Service (AIS) to develop data centers across the country.
• Raimon Land, a top luxury property developer in Thailand, also made a big move to the data center sector after forming a strategic partnership with Nautilus Data Technologies, a US-based data center developer. The partnership allows Raimon Land to provide world-class infrastructure in the country as well as other regional neighbors.

By 2025, the data center market in Thailand is expected to double in size to 100 MW of current capacity mainly due to the increased focus of the hyper-scale cloud service provider’s interest in the region. Moreover, the transition from these company-owned servers within office buildings towards public Cloud facilities is expected to become more apparent mainly due to the greater focus on cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and reliability. Edge data centers will play a more vital role in supporting hyper-scale data centers to improve user experience by reducing the network delay between the user’s action and response, called latency.

Estimated data center operational space: Comparison of key countries across the Asia-Pacific, 2021

Source: RationalStat Analysis

Market Structure and Competitive Overview

Chinese tech giants Tencent and Huawei tapped into the regional market early in 2018, followed by Alibaba, which launched its Cloud segment late last year with multi-megawatt deployments into colocation facilities across Thailand. AWS also acquired three plots of land for self-build deployments to the south of the EEC earlier this year strategically located near the cable landings stations at the Laem Chabang Port.

Some of the top players operating in the market include True IDC, NTT Global Data Centers, SUPERNAP Thailand, STT Global Data Centers Thailand, CSL, Tencent, Huawei, Amazon, IBM Corp, Oracle Corp, Microsoft, and Equinix Inc among others. Bangkok’s data center market is dominated by five major players namely True IDC, NTT Global Data Centers, SUPERNAP Thailand, STT Global Data Centers Thailand, and CSL. Together these players account for nearly 28 MW data center capacity of the city in 2022.

Bangkok’s Data Center Market Share, Q1 2022

Source: RationalStat Analysis

Key Market Segmentation

RationalStat has segmented the Thailand data centers market on the basis of type, ownership, organization, end user, and region.

• By Type
  • Enterprise Data Center
  • Colocation
  • Cloud Data Center
  • Managed Data Center
• By Ownership
  • Owned
  • Leased
  • Third-party
• By Organization
  • Private/SMEs/MNCs
  • Government/Public Entities
• By End User
  • IT & Telecom
  • BFSI
  • Media and Entertainment
  • Government
  • Energy & Utilities
  • Healthcare
  • Retail
  • Automotive & Transportation
  • Logistics
  • Central/Local Administrative Agencies
  • Others (Education etc.)
• By Region
  • North Thailand
  • Eastern Thailand
  • Central Thailand
  • South Thailand

Research Methodology

RationalStat has developed a state-of-the-art research methodology to crunch numbers and provide the best possible real-time insights to clients. We combine a varied range of industry experience, data analytics, and experts’ viewpoint to create a research methodology for market sizing and forecasting.

RationalStat combines a mix of secondary sources as well as primary research to assess the market size and develop a forecast. Key steps involved in accurately deriving the market numbers are:

• Defining the problem by understanding the type of market and data required by the client.
• Data gathering and collection through relevant paid databases, publicly available sources, company reports, annual reports, surveys, and interviews.
• Formulating a hypothesis to create market numbers, forecasts, influencing factors, and their relevance.
• Evaluating and analysing the data by referring to data sources utilized and leveraged.
• Validating, interpreting, and finalizing the data by combining the details gathered from primary and secondary sources with the help of experienced analysts.

Secondary Sources

• Annual reports, company filings, investor presentations, product catalogs, and company documents
• Industry and market-related documents available in the public domain
• Paid databases including Bloomberg, Factiva, S&P Capital IQ, FactSet, Refinitiv Eikon, ICIS, EUWID, and Thomson Reuters, among others
• Whitepapers, research papers, and industry blogs.

Why Buy this Report?

The report is intended for Thailand data centers market manufacturers and suppliers, government organizations, educational organizations, regulatory agencies, and market research firms, among others. The report provides an in-depth analysis of market size, consumption patterns, ongoing market trends and challenges, and future market opportunities. The report will serve as a source for a 360-degree analysis of the market thoroughly delivering insights to clients to find the right answers to their business questions. 

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