Much of SMCSE’s work in data and AI depends on infrastructure that has to sit somewhere. In Southeast Asia, more and more of it sits in the corridor this report examines. The Data Centre Boom in the Growth Triangle: Singapore, Johor & Batam/Riau looks at how Singapore, the Malaysian state of Johor and Indonesia’s Riau Islands have become one of the world’s fastest-growing locations for data centres.
SMCSE Solutions collaborated with Effective Thoughts and Wisdom Inn for Skill Enhancement (WISE) on the report, which Effective Thoughts published. The study was directed by Muhammad Ashhar, SMCSE’s Chief Information Officer and Head of Data & Economics.
What the report shows
- Capacity has moved across the border. Singapore still holds the region’s cloud providers, financial institutions and enterprise customers, but new data centre capacity is being built in Johor and Batam, where land and power are easier to find.
- Two very different routes to growth. Johor’s capacity rose 124% in a single year, to 897MW. Singapore releases capacity in capped rounds with strict conditions, including a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.25 or lower and at least 50% green-energy sourcing.
- The JS-SEZ is where the investment is going. Johor drew RM91.1 billion in approved investment in the first nine months of 2025, and 74.6% of it came through the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. Singapore was the largest single-country investor.
- Batam is growing through anchor projects. DayOne has signed a 450MW power purchase agreement, Indonesia’s largest to date, and the Equator Gate project is a US$5 billion commitment on about 30 hectares.
- Power and water are the constraints to watch. Committed Malaysian data centre demand could exceed 7GW, and one estimate puts cooling water at roughly 25.5 million litres per megawatt of capacity each year.
Why it matters for our clients
For organisations deciding where to host data and workloads in Southeast Asia, the corridor offers capacity Singapore cannot provide on its own. But each of the three territories has its own energy, land-use, environmental and investment-approval rules, and only Singapore and Malaysia are tied together through the JS-SEZ. The question the report leaves open is whether the corridor has the power, water and land to sustain this pace.
Read the full report
The complete report, The Data Centre Boom in Growth Triangle: Singapore, Johor and Batam/Riau, is available on Effective Thoughts.