ISKANDAR PUTERI: Johor continues to attract strong interest from data centre providers with more companies now considering setting up their facilities in the state, says Lee Ting Han.
The state Investment, Trade and Consumer Affairs committee chairman said as many as 13 companies are either in discussions or already at the planning stages when it comes to investing in Johor.
“The discussions involve the Federal and Johor governments, including giving incentives for them to set up their operations in the state,’’ he said.
Lee told reporters this at the opening of the two-storey Equinix JH1 facility situated at Nusajaya Tech Park (NTP) here located about 15km from Singapore via the Second Link Crossing in Tanjung Kupang, Gelang Patah.
He said the Federal government had approved RM144bil in data centre investments for the past two years for the whole country, of which Johor received RM90bil.
Lee said with two clusters of data centres – the Sedenak Tech Park developed by Johor Corporation and NTP, Johor is in a good position to emerge as one of the leading data centre hubs in the region.
“We have the right ecosystem to attract more investments in the data centres,’’ he said, adding eight data centres already operating in Johor with 10 more in development stages.
Lee said that the presence of these investors has created thousands of new job opportunities not only for Johoreans but also Malaysians from other states.
He said it was important for Johor to produce more skilled workers by encouraging the workforce to go reskilling and upskilling for them to enter the data-related industries.
“Going forward, we want to develop and transform the data centre industries in Johor by going into design, research and development and using the latest state-of-art technology,’’ said Lee.
