"Port Singapore"

Amazing in its beauty and uniqueness, the city-state of Singapore, impressively located on 58 islands in the heart of Southeast Asia, now occupies a leading place in the world in many ways: GDP per capita, ease of doing business, low level of corruption, personal security of citizens , transit of goods and passenger traffic, economic activity, production of high-tech products. The state has achieved its economic well-being largely due to its developed transit infrastructure. Singapore is now known primarily as a port - a transshipment base for cargo and passengers from around the world. In turn, the unstoppable growth of the IT sector, which for the last decades has so excited the habitual way of life of mankind, also has not bypassed this truly fabulous island, which will be discussed further. What is Singapore now for the global telecommunications infrastructure and what does this high-tech region continue to pursue? Will he be able to become one of the largest “ports” in the future for handling and further transit of the most valuable cargo of the new century - information?

Big data hub

Singapore is already a key element in the existing IT infrastructure of the Asian region. This was the result of the same very convenient geographical location, as well as the booming economy in the country, which required further improved infrastructure for its further development.

At the moment, in the territory of the city-state, which occupies less than a third of Moscow in the territory, 16 large data processing centers are located, two more according to plans should be put into operation in 2015. This picture is absolutely not accidental, because through the tiny Singapore pass the major network routes to Europe, Asia, America and Australia. From the local IT site, Singapore has already become a link between entire parts of the world.
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As of 2014, out of 54 operating submarine highways in the entire vast region, 16 have been laid through Singapore (ASE, AAG, EAC-C2C, JAKABARE, MCS, MIC-1, TTGN-Intra Asia, TTGN-Tata Indicom, TIS, APCN -2, PGASCOM, Australia-Singapore, SeaMeWe-3, SeaMeWe-4, SJC, i2icn)

Energy efficiency in masses

As you know, energy efficiency is a key element in the successful operation of the IT infrastructure. This issue was especially acute in the conditions of an island state with a humid, hot tropical climate, where circumstances force us to look for non-standard solutions in the functioning of such complex systems as data centers.

At a recent symposium, the main objective and task of which was to compile a local roadmap of efficient energy technologies, the government announced its intention to allocate about $ 80 million for research in the field of energy efficiency in the construction of facilities. Under this program, it is planned to pay special attention to the construction of data centers. In his report, Joh Len Wen, director of the National Energy Research Fund, said: “Singapore now has 58% of the capacity of all data centers in Southeast Asia, and these are energy-intensive facilities that consume about 7% of the country's electricity. The main forces of the project will be focused on research that can suggest how to reduce the consumption of energy resources by our data centers under conditions unsuitable for their atmospheric cooling. ”



It is impossible not to mention the first in South-East Asia, the data center of Google corporation, built just over a year ago. This object is unique not only for its functionality, but also for its colorful design.

What are the components of energy efficiency that should be present in a modern data center? Kenny Seng, one of the speakers at the symposium, the head of architectural solutions in IT at Intel, tried to answer this question.
“There are many solutions that can be applied in a given country. This, of course, is the construction of an information storage system based on cloud services, as well as the further development of virtualization technologies. If we consider the network infrastructure, then it is appropriate to switch to high-throughput channels, up to the ubiquitous transition to optical fiber. A massive transition to solid-state disks will also become an obvious requirement of an “economical” data center: less energy consumption by the drive will result in less heating during operation, which, in turn, will reduce the cost of cooling the server rooms. While SSD drives are clearly more expensive than existing alternative solutions in classic data centers, they are a key element in the cloud services architecture. ”



Also in the context of the topic, Seng mentioned: “Among other things, I believe that the cycles of equipment updates in data centers should be revised. At the current pace and level of technology development, a full update should occur every three to four years. This is a reasonable solution that would cost to implement in a modern data center. Otherwise, you risk at a certain moment to get backward, inefficient equipment, which obviously will not meet the demands of the modern world. ”

Spy passions

It would seem that here it is - the land of wide telecommunication highways, total energy efficiency, the paradise archipelago in the tropics, where every data center wants to go. The revelations of Edward Snowden, a former employee of the all-powerful NSA, whose revelations created so much noise, became a bolt from the blue. The reputation of the aforementioned island nation was also hurt, which gave rise to a number of questions to the country's leadership, to which even now it is difficult to find answers. As it became known from previously classified data presented to the general public, the leadership of Singapore, through which the main fiber-optic communication channels in the region pass, for decades has authorized the collection and transmission of information in the volume of interest by special services of a number of countries.



Thus, from the published correspondence, it became obvious that the key to the information flow of Asia was in the hands of the countries of the so-called organization "Five Eyes" (USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand). The very fact of the country's leadership's cooperation with foreign intelligence services might not have become so blatant if its long-term nature, its wide scope and the audacity with which the information interception system had been established had not been revealed. The materials published by Snowden dealt an irreversible blow to the reputation of a “safe haven”, a safe site for building up new data processing and storage facilities. On whether the country's leadership will be able to regain the lost confidence of the IT market players, most likely, it will depend on what role Port Port will appear to us in the coming decade.

The degree of interest in the Asian market of services for the placement and processing of data each determines for itself. For our company, this market in general and Singapore in particular seem to be very interesting and promising, despite some unpleasant nuances. We plan to closely monitor him and cover it in subsequent publications. If you are also not indifferent to this topic, subscribe to our blog and stay with us.