Equinix has announced the grand opening of its third data center in Singapore. Called SG3, the purpose-built facility is the next block from its existing SG1 data center at Ayer Rajah Crescent. With its gross floor area of 385,000 square feet (35,700 sq m) that can house approximately 5,000 cabinets when fully built-up, SG3 is also the company’s largest data center in the Asia-Pacific.

In its press statement, Equinix said the opening of SG3 will further extend its platform to meet growing demand for interconnection and data center services in Singapore and the region. Notably, SG3 has been designed to meet the stringent safety and data security guidelines as specified by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which had been highlighted as an area of possible concern for aging data centers in the region.

In addition, Equinix’s SG3 data center also offers a number of green features such as solar panels to power its external and ancillary areas, and the use of recycled water (NEWater) as a cooling agent. Indeed, SG3 was awarded with the Platinum award under the BCA-IDA’s Green Mark for Data Centers scheme that was launched in 2013.

Lots more cabinets 

The first phrase of SG3 represents an investment of US$53M, and will see 1,000 cabinets being made available. This comes on the heels of the sixth phase of Equinix’s SG2 data center, which provided an additional 700 cabinets. According to Equinix, the total investment by the company to date in Singapore is now over US $300M.

Orange Carriers Singapore, a fully-owned subsidiary of Orange Group, global communications solutions provider, and Datapipe, which offers managed hybrid IT solutions for the enterprise, are the first few tenants who signed up to deploy their services on SG3. Separately, Fujitsu also announced its new data center within SG3, its third facility in Singapore that will offer both private and public cloud offerings.

The new SG3 data center is part of the five new data centers announced by Equinix earlier this month to add to its existing estate of more than 100 data centers. As reported then, the program will increase the data center capacity significantly as part of an investment of US$227M, adding one million square feet (Around 100,000 sq m) to its global floor space.

“Over the years, we have seen our customers’ needs evolve to include greater demand for reliable, fast, and scalable multi-cloud interconnection services in an environment that meets stringent security standards,” said Clement Goh, managing director, Equinix South Asia in a statement. “We hope to reinforce Singapore’s position as a global data management hub by providing organizations with the ability to connect to an established business ecosystem of existing and potential customers and partners via SG3.”

We managed to speak with Samuel Lee, the president of Equinix Asia Pacific. Read our interview here.