Regional demand for data centres is surging, driven by technological advances, increasing adoption of cloud-based services, and the GCC’s accelerated digital transformation.
The GCC is expected to witness some of the strongest levels of growth in the global data centre market over the coming years. Pivoting from oil-driven to data-driven economies has seen the GCC states invest heavily in digital infrastructure.
The UAE’s ICT spending is estimated to touch $23 billion by 2024, while Qatar’s spending will amount to $9 billion. The pandemic, in fact, exposed the gaps in digital infrastructure and drove up the demand for regional data centres for cloud-based services.
Construction Week Saudi sat down with Joe Labaky, General Manager of UAE and Emerging Markets at AMANA Contracting to learn more about AMANA’s activities in the kingdom and how it’s mitigating the associated challenges.
“There is a surge in demand for data centres in Saudi Arabia,” says Labaky. “To respond to this need, AMANA has been extensively developing two design & build data centre projects for civil and infrastructure works in the kingdom.
He added that these data centres are located in the western region, and are intended to be Tier III, as certified by Uptime Institute, and will have even higher specifications, as demanded by global hyper-scalers.
What are Data Center Tiers?
Data center tiers are a system used to describe specific kinds of data center infrastructure in a consistent way. Tier 1 is the simplest infrastructure, while Tier 4 is the most complex and has the most redundant components. Each tier includes the required components of all the tiers below it.
Elaborating on the challenges, Labaky noted that building a robust supply chain is always a challenge: This is further compounded by the huge influx of construction projects in the kingdom, which is causing a shortage of manpower and material.”
AMANA is open to tapping into new markets, says Labaky
Labaky, however, pointed out that with proper project management and planning, the company is able to mitigate many of the challenges associated with building data centres in the kingdom.
He explained: “We have a strong design and delivery team that has expanded its capabilities to better understand the complexity of data centres through hands-on experience, and are delivering projects, as well as training via global agencies, to become ‘Accredited Tier Designers (ATD)’.”
Labaky summarised that AMANA will continue to meet the demand for data centres in the region. “We are open to tapping into new markets to share our design-build knowledge and expertise, and East Africa, with a focus on Egypt, at the same time, Kenya is certainly part of our wider regional strategy,” he concluded.
Author
