Building data centers: Accelerating national digital transformation

Shift from foreign to domestic

Recently, at Tan Phu Trung Industrial Park (Cu Chi District, Ho Chi Minh City), Viettel Group started construction of a data center (DC) with a designed capacity of 140MW, among the top 10 in Southeast Asia. The project is deployed on an area of ​​nearly 4 hectares, allowing the installation of about 10,000 rack cabinets (server cabinets), expected to operate phase 1 from the first quarter of 2026 and complete the entire project before 2030. When completed, this will be the first data center in Vietnam to reach a capacity of over 100MW, also known as super large scale, equivalent to large data centers in the world.

A shift at the monitoring area at CMC Corporation's Data Center in District 7, Ho Chi Minh City

Previously, in April 2024, Viettel also built a 30MW data center, meeting the scale of more than 2,400 rack cabinets at Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park (Hanoi), which is the largest data center in Vietnam today. "The super-large-scale data center at Tan Phu Trung Industrial Park is not a single project but a strategically important piece in the overall picture of digital infrastructure that Viettel is continuing to build," said Major General Tao Duc Thang, Chairman and General Director of Viettel. Currently, the group has 15 data centers operating in Hanoi, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City, and Binh Duong.

The Vietnamese data center market is currently dominated by domestic telecommunications companies such as VNPT, Viettel IDC, FPT Telecom, CMC Telecom, VNG... with significant growth in demand for cloud services and big data analysis. The annual growth rate of the data center market in Vietnam is about 15%/year and Vietnam is one of the 10 emerging data center markets in the world.

In recent years, many domestic enterprises have invested thousands of billions, even tens of thousands of billions of VND to build international standard data centers, creating initiative for domestic internet infrastructure as well as being ready to compete internationally. This contributes to changing the data ownership environment, domestic enterprises store their data domestically instead of having to store data at foreign companies.

For example, VNG Data Center with a usable floor area of ​​up to ^12,400m2 in Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone (District 7, Ho Chi Minh City) is ready with digital service platforms, secure data storage and cloud computing solutions specifically for customers in Vietnam. Initially, VNG Data Center will provide 410 racks, depending on demand, it will expand to 1,600 racks to promptly meet the expected strong growth in the digital transformation process in Vietnam.

Implement digital resource strategy

The country currently has 33 data centers and 49 service providers, mainly concentrated in major cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The Vietnamese data center market will flourish from 2024, when large telecommunications enterprises will launch "Make in Vietnam" data centers. According to statistics from W&S Market Research, the data center market in Vietnam is expected to reach 1.03 billion USD in 2028, more than 1.26 billion USD in 2030, with an average compound growth rate of 10.8% per year.

Viettel engineer on duty at the Data Center Monitoring System

According to Mr. Vu The Binh, General Secretary of the Vietnam Internet Association, the operation of large-scale domestic data centers has promoted the transformation process of Vietnamese agencies, organizations and enterprises, especially promoting digital transformation. Data centers also anticipate the needs from abroad to Vietnam following the wave of foreign investment and the trend of shifting content closer to Vietnamese internet users by global content service providers.

Mr. Nguyen Trung Chinh, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Executive Chairman of CMC Technology Group, shared: “CMC Data Center (District 7, Ho Chi Minh City) with an investment capital of 1,500 billion VND, is the most modern and secure data center in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The center also serves the development goal of Ho Chi Minh City by 2030 to become a city of high-quality services, modern technology, leading in the development of the digital economy and digital society”.

Viettel representative said that the data center project in Tan Phu Trung Industrial Park is a data transit point attracting foreign enterprises to Vietnam such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon... and a broadband connection point from Ho Chi Minh City to other points in the world. Vice Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Vo Van Hoan assessed that Viettel's data center in Cu Chi district can become an important data transit point, attracting global technology corporations and enterprises to invest and operate in Vietnam, hoping to be a driving force to help Ho Chi Minh City develop digital infrastructure, build smart cities and digital government...

Decision No. 142/QD-TTg dated February 2, 2024 approving the National Data Strategy to 2030 signed by Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang has quite specific content on data infrastructure development. The strategy sets the goal that by 2030, 100% of national data centers, regional data centers, national centers for big data storage and high-performance computing nationwide will be guaranteed to be successfully connected, forming a network to share computing capacity and big data processing to serve the socio-economic and cultural development of the country.

BA TAN

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/xay-dung-cac-trung-tam-du-lieu-thuc-day-nhanh-qua-trinh-chuyen-doi-so-quoc-gia-post794205.html