TOKYO, Myanmar, July 4 2013—Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced that it has, with KDDI Corporation, one of Japan’s largest network solution providers, won an order from Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd., a major Japanese think tank and consultancy, to supply a modular data center for a securities exchange system in Myanmar. This will be the first time that Toshiba has supplied its modular data center in an overseas market.
Daiwa Institute of Research, Japan Exchange Group and the Yangon-based Central Bank of Myanmar plan to open a securities exchange in Yangon in 2015.
The market for modular data centers is growing. They offer shorter lead times and lower initial costs than building type data centers, and as they can be stacked it is very easy to add additional capacity on the same site. In Japan, Toshiba has supplied modules to data center operators, cloud operators and enterprises, and they have won high evaluations for energy efficiency. The company is seeking to expand sales in Japan and overseas.
Toshiba’s modular data center offers the robust structure of heavy gauge steel frame, along with side-air-cooling flow, which is better in a hot and humid climate like Myanmar’s than standard vertical flow. This new approach allows center operators to reduce power consumption by fans to 1/3 that of vertical flows. The data centers also integrate redundant systems, allowing continued operation in the event of a problem with one unit. A voltage stabilizer will also be built into the securities exchange modules, as power supply voltages in Myanmar can be irregular.
Governments of Southeast Asia, including Singapore, are promoting incentives to attract investments, including data centers. In 2012, Toshiba developed and demonstrated a pilot data center optimized for tropical climates, in cooperation with Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. The demonstration indicated that the new system had the potential to cut annual power consumption by approximately 30%. This is achieved by circulating unrefrigerated outside air in the cooling system, even in tropical zones.
Building on the momentum of development work Japan and the advances achieved by the Singapore project, Toshiba will promote further sales of its modular data centers in Southeast Asia and seek to expand its global business in energy efficient, low cost modular data centers.
