HCMC ranks among top markets in the Land Price category for data centres development, by Cushman & Wakefield

The annual report, now in its fourth year, ranks major data centre markets around the world according to 13 weighted categories including market size, fiber connectivity, power cost and environmental risk to determine the top overall markets as well as the top performing markets in each category.

With many of the largest markets in the APAC region boasting particularly high land costs, only HCMC ranks within the top 10 for the Land Price category. The rest of the top ten markets in the category are: Columbus, Santiago, Johannesburg, Atlanta, Nashville, Phoenix, Austin, Denver, and Chicago

According to the latest Q4 2022 HCMC Marketbeat report, the average rental price reached US$159/sqm/lease cycle, up 3% QoQ and 10% YoY. Vietnam may be a frontier data centre market at this juncture but has numerous fundamentals that would suggest great potential for development going forward. The country currently has 70% internet penetration, with an estimated 29 million people yet to get online. Over 48% of Vietnam’s capacity is located in the capital of Ho Chi Minh Currently, only a small number of multinationals are locally requiring high-level capacity.

The common approach for international operators is to partner with the local telecommunication operators. There is a sizable lack of existing infrastructure relative to the population of the market and demand for internet services. This represents a major opportunity at both the content provision and infrastructure establishment level.

South of Ho Chi Minh is preferred as a hub for data centres, especially for cloud services platform providers, due to latency issues and securing of manpower. Increasing land prices, limited land availability (especially for hyperscale) and limited current or future power supply in Ho Chi Minh directly are pushing new data centre developments to Binh Duong or Dong Nai provinces.

Significant Ecosystem Development in Vietnam:

• CMC Telecom opens its Tan Thuan Data Centre in August. The facility was designed by B-Barcelona of Singapore. The facility has a total area of 13,133 sqm and was 30% preleased at launch according to CMC.
• Australian edge data centres firm, Edge Centres, have expanded into Asia with the deployment of their first data centre, EC51, in Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh in collaboration with the Vietnam National University. They also have plans for an additional edge site, HCMC District 1, in Ho Chi Minh.
• GAW Capital acquired greenfield land in the Saigon Hi-Tech Park in Ho Chi Minh. The data centre is expected to be over 18,000 sqm and support 20MW in capacity.
• NTT GDC and local Vietnamese firm Quang Dung Technology (QD.Tek) to develop a new data centre located in the Saigon Hi-Tech Park that will support 6MW of IT capacity, with an estimated launch date of 2024.
• Viettel, a Vietnamese telecommunications company, announced plans to build a new data centre totalling US$260M in investment. While specifics on the facility have yet to be fully clear, this would be Viettel’s third project in Ho Chi Minh

Competition for sites between both data center players and other asset classes has reached a fever pitch over the course of the past year. Fulfillment centers and large-scale single family rental developments have been evaluating similar sites to data centers.

One notable advantage that data centers have in competition for these sites is the limited impact on surrounding traffic and parking availability, a key area of concern for a number of local communities. However, data centers do require a higher power draw, and we have seen greater local community concerns about potential effects on electrical grids. The growth of edge data centers has continued, optimizing workload for latency.

Singapore, Hong Kong rank third and fourth in global data centre market comparison

Northern Virginia, the largest data centre market in the world and the top-ranked market for the past three years, this year shared the highest rank with Portland following surging prices for prime land and a county-wide pause on development due to power restrictions. Portland surged from 10th place in 2022 to achieve the joint top spot; Atlanta rounded out the top five markets.

Singapore and Hong Kong were the only metropolitan areas outside of the United States to make the top 10 overall rankings. Singapore ranked within the top markets globally in all three high-weight categories: market size, fibre connectivity and cloud availability. Its strong performance across categories including its low vacancy rate – reflective of high demand – low environmental risk, and its status as a smart city helped cement its rank despite its recently-lifted two-year moratorium which limited new stock.

Hong Kong, ranked sixth in 2022, also ranked highly across categories, with strong connectivity, consistent demand, availability of cloud services and its business-friendly tax structure offsetting its high land prices.

Within Asia Pacific, Singapore and Hong Kong were ranked first and second, with Sydney and Seoul tying for third place. Tokyo rounded out the top five markets.

Overall, Asia Pacific markets accounted for 20 of the 63 markets reviewed. New entrants Johor and Hyderabad ranked at 15th and 28th on the overall index, respectively. Johor was noted to benefit from its proximity to both Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and its developer-friendly tax environment, while incentives to the sector being offered in Hyderabad along with its early cloud availability – it currently has access to two of the three major cloud services - saw it touted as an alternative top market to Mumbai.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Head of Asia Pacific Data Centre Practice Group Todd Olson said 2022 saw hyperscale tenants continue their expansion across all regions.

“Hyperscalers, followed closely by co-location providers and developers, have shown increasing interest in secondary and emerging markets which often offer greater availability of, and lower prices for, both land and power. Moving forward, we expect to see secondary markets make significant jumps in the rankings.”

Cushman & Wakefield’s Head of Data Centre Advisory Team, Asia Pacific, Vivek Dahiya, said interest and investment in the region would continue at pace as the sector evolved.

“We are seeing significant investment and interest in Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, Hyderabad, Johor and Manila and we expect this to continue, along with interest in other primary and secondary markets in the region.

“Data centres are a rapidly evolving asset class as evidenced by this report: last year, Portland ranked 10th. This year it tied for first. We expect such strong movements to continue in the years to come as the sector evolves and matures.”

View the latest Markebeat from Cushman & Wakefield >> HCMC Q4 2022 Marketbeat

Download the full report here: 2023 Global Data Center Market Comparison (cld.bz)