With services set to go live in early 2023, the 42,000m2, 45MW facility will be located in Keihanna Science City, in the Kansai area between Kyoto and Osaka.
Padraig MacColgain, VP and head of APAC at Colt DCS said: “The acquisition of this site is another stake in the ground for us, demonstrating the momentum of our hyperscale strategy and cementing our foothold in APAC.
“This land was not originally available for purchase by a data centre operator due to Keihanna Science City being an area designated for research and development activities. However, we received immense support from the Kyoto Prefectural authorities to help make our acquisition possible and want to thank them greatly for their support”.
The developments followed news in July that Colt DCS owner Fidelity had entered into a joint venture with Mitsui to provide advanced hyperscale data centres in Japan, with potential further growth in APAC.
At the time, Colt DCS had 50MW of existing built capacity in Japan, with the JV deal set to drive this to 140MW. The Fidelity-owned firm pre-sold 94% of capacity before the launch of its Inzai Three facility in November last year.
“Mitsui is very pleased to celebrate the ground-breaking for the first data centre project in Keihanna. Starting with this exciting project, Mitsui hopes to further strengthen our partnership with Fidelity and Colt for our JV,” said Shinsuke Waka, GM of the financial business division at Mitsui & Co.
“There has been a surge in cloud service demand throughout Japan, all of which requires carrier-neutral network access in the region, as well as disaster recovery sites,” commented Quy Nguyen, VP of global accounts and solutions.
“Combined with the fact that the Kansai region of Japan has a population of around 22.4 million, generating enough GDP to position itself at the same level as the Top 20 countries, we expect this facility to be a key site for Colt DCS,” Waka added.
The importance of geographically diverse sites in Japan allows operators to enhance their disaster resilience and recovery – there's more on this in the August/September issue of Capacity magazine. The practice has become widespread since the country's 2011 earthquake.
In addition, this new facility will employ state-of-the-art cooling technologies to ensure high efficiency, while supporting Colt DCS and its clients’ sustainability targets.
