NTT Communications has opened the second phase of its financial data centre (FDC2) in Hong Kong amid the increasingly data-driven and digitalized corporates in the city.

With more than 7,000 server racks, the NTT complex is one of Hong Kong’s largest data centres. The launch marks the completion of NTT’s purpose-built data centre complex, which is designed to help data-centric enterprises accelerate their digital transformation.

Located in Tsueng Kwan O, NTT’s FDC is a purpose-built complex with two data centre towers and a command control tower. As digital transformation, big data, cloud and virtualization generate new demands on IT infrastructure, corporates are looking to data centres to accelerate their digital transformation.

FDC2 is designed with ultra-high power density, ultra-tall rack, energy-efficient cooling and data visualization technologies to create new values and enhance business performance for clients. It features digitalization and big data analysis approach for end-to-end data centre lifecycle management.

Taylor Man, executive vice president of NTT Com Asia’s Cloud Business Division discusses why its location across the data centre of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx) is important to clients and what new features the latest phase of the data centre offers.

What is the capacity utilization of the FDC's first phase, opened in 2013? What percentage of clients come from the financial services sector?

When FDC1 first launched in 2013, FDC1 had reached 80% of the capacity, and now it's already at 100% full capacity. We have roughly 20-30 clients in FDC1, and financial service is one of the major sectors. Most of our clients are multinational companies who demand regional/global connectivity while using Hong Kong as the regional data centre hub or the "gateway" to or from China.

Please explain why proximity to HKEx's data centre might be an important selling point for companies in the financial sector to choose the FDC.

International financial trading systems continue to operate at ever-increasing speeds. In transactions that require peak performance from computers and networks, even microsecond (1/1,000,000 second) delays can have devastating results. As a consequence, demand is rising in fast-growing Asian financial markets for networks that enable faster, more reliable high-frequency trading. This demand has put the spotlight on NTT Communications' low-latency backbone network, such as Asia-submarine Cable (ASE), which seamlessly links key Asian financial centres (Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore) with other international exchanges and the company's other high-performance data centres.

In Hong Kong, FDC's close proximity to HKEx also offers a geographical advantage for financial services companies when managing their trading systems and supporting platforms. FDC's proximity location to the HKEx will also complement what the HKEx data centre offers to their clients around the world.

What are the major differences in the FDC2 to FDC1 and why are they important to clients?

Land scarcity and high rents are driving ICT hubs in cities like Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo to plan their data centre construction smarter and more cost effectively in terms of land use. Ultra-high power density design of up to 24kVA/rack and ultra-tall rack up to 54U (FDC1 uses 50U racks) are the key upgrades of FDC2. As more servers can be put on a much "taller" rack on premises, companies' total cost of ownership can be lowered.

Energy-efficient & cooling technologies are important features at FDC2 and help our clients reduce power consumption, which could account for up to 60% of the cost of running a data centre. A technology upgrade with energy-saving feature means driving customers' total cost of ownership down - a growing concern of local and multinational enterprises of our customers.

Features include our cooling battery (which is the largest thermal storage in Hong Kong) for uninterrupted cooling, an innovative front-flow cooling wall with hot aisle containment (first in Hong Kong) and smart lighting.

Could you provide some examples of critical financial services that currently rely on the FDC1 data centre?

Let me cite the following two client cases - L'Occitane (Far East) Limited and NVIDIA Corporation, which rely on our NTT Communications Hong Kong Data Centre (another facility in Taipo), as an example on how data centre and its corresponding network connectivity are critical to business.

With over 30 retail branches in Hong Kong and Macau, L'Occitane needed to support its supply chain management through resilient IT infrastructures. With retail competition reaching a feverish pace, the manufacturing and retail company wanted to ensure its continued success through its data strategy, improved communications and effective collaboration. L'Occitane has thus used our NTT Communications Hong Kong Data Centre, a Tier III+ fully redundant infrastructure to provide a highly secure and robust environment for managing and housing critical business data generated from different business outlets and touch points.

NVIDIA is a global renowned visual computing technology company, which has stringent requirements on reliability for both data centre and global network connectivity. Similar to L'Occitane, it has used our NTT Communications Hong Kong Data Centre as its data centre hub, while bridge out to their Taiwan regional office with secured and high-quality Arcstar Global Leased Line network service with guaranteed bandwidth - enabling easy transmission of images, multimedia and mission-critical data for their business.