Expanding to telcos in Europe, Asia, Africa and Middle East
Saudi Arabia is now the most exciting and dynamic ICT markets in the Middle East and North Africa, according to Niall McLoughlin, SVP of the property company the Damac Group, which created digital infrastructure company Edgnex in August 2021 with the intention of ‘disrupting the datacentre market’.
Edgnex has just selected has selected the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as its first foray into the market with a colocation data centre less than 20km away from centre of the capital Riyadh and 47km from the airport. It is set to offer telcos “low-latency access to the entire KSA market” alongside “high-fibre density and connectivity.”
The facility will have a maximum IT load of 20 megawatts (MW) and will cover an area of 17,720 square metres. It’s expected to go live in Q3, 2023. The company has a budget of $1 billion and reportedly it plans to establish more of these power houses in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East in ‘the near future’.
The region is the “ideal hub for connecting Asia, Africa, the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] and Europe”, said McLoughlin and the telcoms market is “a hyperconnected crossroads and one of the most strategic locations for data centre investment in the region.”
“We want to help attract hyperscalers and innovators from around the world and give them a foundation for growth in the Kingdom. This is a tremendous opportunity to serve growing local demand while offering world-class facilities to players from across the globe,” said McLoughlin.
The facility is aimed at local customers, hyperscalers and other wholesale colocation requirements, such as mobile operators, to save them having to build their own facilities, the company said.
Another factor for the company’s decision to invest in Saudi Arabia is growing data usage in the region, fuelled by the use of bandwidth-hungry applications and services. It is estimated that more than half of the country’s population (33.4 million people) is under 30 years old, explaining the increasing growth in the use of digital services.
Edgnex said its data centre will also support KSA’s Vision for 2030 – a strategic framework seeking to diversify the country’s economy. It would do so by “providing a foundation for local and regional digital transformation and innovation, while aiming to attract global multi-nationals to the country.”