Mr Lee Yi Shyan at Telin Singapore’s Data Center Groundbreaking Ceremony

SPEECH BY MR LEE YI SHYAN, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY & MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AT TELIN SINGAPORE’S DATA CENTER GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY, ON FRIDAY 05 JUNE 2015, 11:00AM, DATA CENTRE PARK JURONG

Ms Rini Soemarno, Minister of State Owned Enterprises, Indonesia

Mr Ridwan Hassan, His Excellency, Indonesian Deputy Chief of Mission

Mr Alex Sinaga, Group CEO, PT Telkom Indonesia

Mr Syraif Ahmad, President Director and CEO, PT Telin Group

Ms Septika Widyasrini, Telin CEO Singapore

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Introduction

Good morning. I’m very pleased to join you today for the groundbreaking ceremony of Telin Singapore’s data center in Data Centre Park Jurong. This is Telin’s third data centre in Singapore. We are pleased with the fact that Telin is growing in Singapore. My heartiest congratulations.

Singapore and Indonesia enjoy strong and warm relations. Our cooperation is multi-faceted. Indonesia is amongst our top trading and investment partners in ASEAN. Our economies are closely linked in terms of logistics, finance, information and goods flow. Our peoples visit each other through the frequent flights connecting Singapore and many major cities in Indonesia. It is thus my great pleasure to welcome Minister Rini, the top executives of Telkom Indonesia and many Indonesian friends present to Singapore.

Today is also the Opening of the 28th SEA Games. I hope all of you will also have the opportunities to soak in the sporting atmosphere and capture the excitements as we see people exchanging messages and pictures taken of the sports events. Many of these information exchanges will no doubt flow through Telin’s data center and network. So hopefully in the not too distant future, Telin will feel the need to establish the 4th data centre here.

Data Centers are the core and critical infrastructure to enable digitization

The wave of digitization is unstoppable. Companies today realize how important it is to tap into the tremendous power of digital technology to add value to consumers. For instance, more and more companies rely on data centers to deliver real-time high-value services, in areas such as tele-monitoring of patients at home, or in high frequency trading in finance.  

Besides companies, governments are also keen to ride the wave of digitization and reap its many benefits. In Singapore, the government is committed to growing Singapore as a Smart Nation by developing infrastructure, facilitating innovation and creating frameworks for the public to share relevant information. Backed by robust data centers, the Smart Nation effort will help to translate data into insights for the creation of new products and services, and enable better living for all citizens.  

As more individuals, companies and governments ride the wave of digitization, the data explosion we experience today will only grow in momentum and strength. According to Microsoft, the digital world now already holds twice as much data as there are litres of water in our oceans. In the next 5 years, we will generate more data than we did in the previous 5,000 years.  

This is certainly good news for industry players. In Singapore, we already see increased demand for data centre services from MNCs, SMEs and start‑ups located not just in Singapore, but also regionally and globally.

Singapore as the choice location for premium data centers

Today, Singapore is the choice location for industry leaders like Telin to site their best-in-class data centres. We are the region’s leading data management hub. More than 50% of South East Asia’s data centre space is located here. Singapore is also very well-connected to key global data nodes. For example, by the end of this year, we will have an extensive network of 19 submarine cable systems connecting us with the world. As such, we welcome leading data centre companies to tap into the huge market demand for such services, by building up a key presence in Singapore. 

Investing in R&D to boost the competiveness of data centers companies in Singapore

To boost the competitiveness of Singapore-based data center companies, we have also invested efforts into research and development across our research institutes. For instance, the Institute for Infocomm Research, or I2R, a research institute under ASTAR, conducts research on photonic. This game-changing technology will revolutionise how we design racks in data centers, making them more efficient and reliable.

The Energy Research Institute at NTU has also co-developed an advanced cooling technology with the company Toshiba, in response to the Green Data Centre Innovation Challenge by IDA. This technology will enable data centers to reduce their energy consumption by one-third.

Building talent to meet the needs of the data center industry and to position Singapore as the digital capital of Asia

While physical hardware and computer software are often the first things that come to mind when discussing the data centre industry, the human heartware is equally critical. Today, this industry already employs 13,500 data center professionals in Singapore, although this number will need to grow to manage the growing amount of data and the increasing sophistication of data management services demanded. We will therefore continue to invest in equipping Singaporeans with the right capabilities to effectively serve the needs of this industry. For example, IDA’s Critical Infocomm Technology Resource Programme is a training incentive programme to equip professionals in the infocomms sector with key capabilities in areas such as cloud computing and mission critical network operations. It also covers new and emerging areas such as Green Infocomm and Business Analytics. Up till this point, the programme has trained 13,000 professionals.

Secondly, we must also train graduates with the right skills to serve the increasingly sophisticated challenges of this industry, in areas outside of data management and computer programming. In particular, as data centres are huge consumers of energy, to improve their energy efficiency, universities such as NTU and NUS will also provide courses to equip students with knowledge of energy efficient technologies such as green data centre design and server virtualisation.   

Finally, in the fast-paced world of infocomm technologies, our talent development efforts need to be continually renewed and updated, to keep pace with future industry needs. We have therefore emphasised the importance of linking our local universities and polytechnics with companies, to develop curricula that equip Singaporeans with future digital capabilities such as applied analytics and cyber security. To this end, we are committed to training 2,500 analytics professionals by the end of 2017. 

These combined efforts will allow Singapore to realize our vision of being the digital capital of Asia, a vibrant and leading-edge location for companies meet their data management and analysis needs in a sustainable manner.  As Singapore embarks on its journey to become a smart nation, I believe that Telin Singapore will play a key role in building our digital infrastructure.

Conclusion

In closing, let me once again thank Minister Ibu Rini for sharing the joy and honor of ground-breaking Telin’s third data center in Singapore. I wish all present great success in your future endeavors.

Thank you.