Myanmar will get its first stock exchange in 2015, which will be powered by a modular data center provided by Toshiba.

It is working with Japanese data center company KDDI under a contract awarded by Japanese think-tank the Daiwa Institute of Research to put technology infrastructure in place for the exchange.

The institute is working with the Japan Exchange Group and the Yangon-based Central Bank of Myanmar to open the exchange.

Last year the Daiwa Institute of Research and KDDI signed an agreement to work with Fujitsu to build Myanmar’s first cloud environment for the Central Bank.

Much of this work is being undertaken before the integration of the ASEAN nations scheduled for 2015, which has seen Myanmar go through democratic reforms, part of which has involved the modernization of its financial sector with the relaxation of financial regulations.

“Under these circumstances, operating stability at the Central Bank of Myanmar is ever-more crucial to the country's financial system given its pivotal role in issuing and managing currency and implementing monetary policy,” the Daiwa Institute of Research said.

It said before now many of the financial functions in Myanmar were carried out by hand but new computing environments add layers of security to its financial operations and will help foster economic growth across the country.

Daiwa Institute of Research president Takashi Fukai said the think tank will be providing knowledge for the establishment of the exchange and its own cloud platform for use with virtual desktop and other environments.

“This new computing environment paves the way to build an ICT infrastructure that is indispensable for the modernization of Myanmar's financial system and represents an important milestone toward the establishment of a stock exchange,” Fukai said.

Toshiba initially designed its modular data centers for use in Japan, but has been building in technologies in recent times that make them well suited to tropical climates.

The modular data center has a heavy steal gauge frame and uses air-side cooling instead of vertical cooling which it said is better for hot and humid climates.

“This new approach allows [data] center operators to reduce power consumption by fans to one third that of vertical flows,” Toshiba said.

“The data centers also integrate redundant systems allowing continued operation in the event of a problem with one unit.”

Toshiba also built a voltage stabilizer into the securities exchange modules to further guarantee power supply.

Find out more about the modular data center in an interview FOCUS conducted with the company’s chief specialist of the data center solution engineering group Makoto Honda and read more about it in an article here.