The Chinese data center colocation market will grow at a 40% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), reaching more than 380% of its 2012 size by 2016, according to the China Colocation Market Report published by DCD Intelligence. To strengthen its position within such a fast growing market, Pacnet is building four regional data center hubs in China that will leverage its Internet Data Center (IDC) provider licenses.

CEO of Pacnet Business Solutions (PBS) Henry Lam told FOCUS these data center hubs will be located in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Guangdong, covering most of the big cities in China. “There are three major drivers for colocation evolution in China – virtualization, cloud computing and demand for enhanced data center capabilities,” Lam says.

Along with the explosive growth of mobile internet and ‘big data’, more and more Chinese enterprises are undertaking server virtualization initiatives and moving data to the cloud, which results in higher density rack deployment and greater visibility requirement over data center network and performance. To capitalize on the evolving market, Lam said PBS is offering facility and international network together.

“Our ultimate goal is to be a one-stop provider of integrated scalable turnkey data center, network and connectivity solutions,” Lam said. “We are interconnecting our facilities within China and across Asia to enable the delivery of Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), a cloud solution we intend to overlay on top of data center infrastructure in order to deliver flexible network and connectivity services using a pay-per use pricing model.”

Lam says China accounts for 25% of Asia’s data center market and Pacnet already services this with data center services in Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. “By mid 2014 our new data center in Tianjin and the second phase of our Chongqing data center will have been completed. Our future data center builds include Shanghai and Guangdong,” Lam says.

Pacnet operates in 26 cities in 13 countries and regions including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom and US. Pacnet Business Solutions, an equity joint venture between Pacnet and Zhong Ren Telecom, is the first Sino-Foreign telecommunications joint venture to have been awarded licenses to operate internet data centers (IDCs) by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Pacnet was also awarded licenses to offer IP VPN services in 23 provinces in China and licenses to offer Internet Access Services in ten cities as well as data center network services in five cities in China.

Lam was a keynote speaker for Datacenter Dynamics Chengdu Conference. In his keynote speech, he addressed a variety of issues including the drivers of China’ colocation market evolution and NaaS’s role in driving colocation evolution.