In this interview, Bridge Data Centres CEO Eric Fan reflects on what operating across APAC has taught him about data centre growth and resilience. He explains why the region can’t be approached as a single hyperscale market, how operators are being forced to balance standardisation with local constraints, and why decisions made today around efficiency and integration will shape competitiveness over the next five years.
What assumption about APAC data centre growth does the industry get wrong?
One recurring misconception is that APAC will scale in a straight line, as if the region were a single, uniform hyperscale market. It is not. APAC is a cluster of very different digital economies, each shaped by distinct factors, including power availability, regulatory frameworks, local enterprise maturity, sustainability expectations, and infrastructure readiness.
Southeast Asia is a good example. Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand are riding a wave of hyperscale and AI cloud expansion, but each country reaches that scale for different reasons. Meanwhile, India behaves like a completely different engine, combining fast-growing enterprises, regulatory localisation, edge demand, and a much more distributed geography.
What’s the toughest trade-off between standardisation and localisation in APAC data centres?
This is something we navigate every day. Standardisation brings speed, consistency, and cost control across design, construction, and operations. But in Asia, localisation is unavoidable. Each market has its own constraints around energy pricing, access to renewable power, water availability, cooling requirements, and regulatory frameworks.
Localisation increases planning complexity, but it is also where long-term resilience and sustainability come from. This has meant working closely with governments, utilities, and ecosystem partners to build infrastructure that fits the local environment rather than applying a uniform approach across markets.
Energy strategy illustrates this trade-off. Across our portfolio, around half of operating data centres are powered by solar energy through local renewable programs and partnerships. In markets where solar alone is not enough, we are pursuing alternative lower-carbon power options. These include green energy frameworks, grid-based renewable mechanisms, and utility-led schemes that provide customers with verifiable access to renewable power.
Water is another area where localisation matters. In Johor, we are integrating a water reclamation plant into our MY07 campus so we can recycle water for cooling and reduce demand on industrial supply. In Thailand, we have secured a 10-year industrial water agreement with Eastwater Stecon Utilities to support reliable and sustainable water access for our Chonburi campus.
Together, these approaches move away from standardised designs and introduce additional planning and coordination. They reflect the different constraints, resources, and regulatory conditions in each market.
What design principle will shape the next generation of APAC data centres?
The next generation of data centres in APAC will be shaped by system-integrated design. Facilities can no longer operate as isolated power-and-space boxes. They need to function as integrated nodes within the region’s digital, energy, and water systems.
In practice, this means accounting for interconnection, renewable integration, and resource circularity from the outset. In APAC, this also involves connecting campuses to subsea cable routes, fibre-rich corridors, utility infrastructure, and energy supply pathways, while supporting the scale required for hyperscale and AI workloads.
This approach is reflected in how our campuses are developed. Sites are located at fibre and subsea convergence points to support dense, low-latency connectivity for AI and computing platforms. We also work with local utilities on long-term power and water arrangements, including Johor Special Water and Tenaga Nasional Berhad in Malaysia, and a joint venture with East Water and Stecon Utilities in Thailand.
Ultimately, this points to data centres that are more deeply integrated into their surrounding digital, environmental, and industrial systems. That is the approach we are taking across our markets.
What capability will APAC data centre operators wish they’d invested in five years earlier?
Five years from now, many operators will likely wish they had invested earlier in predictive intelligence, rather than relying only on dashboards or routine analytics. This refers to systems that optimise power intake, cooling behaviour, renewable utilisation, embodied carbon, and water consumption in real time. The region is moving toward higher density deployments, tighter sustainability requirements, and more volatile energy markets.
Power and water efficiency directly shape operating margins, and this pressure is likely to intensify.
Our work has focused on improving efficiency, with the aim of achieving an average power usage effectiveness (PUE) of about 1.2 across Asia. This reflects the view that efficiency has a direct relationship with competitiveness and long-term operational resilience.
In APAC’s next phase of digital growth, operators that invested early in scale, embedded intelligence, and sustainable performance are likely to be better positioned.
What lesson from operating in APAC has reshaped your view of infrastructure resilience?
Operating in APAC has reshaped how I think about infrastructure resilience. Resilience now goes beyond physical durability. It involves creating systems that can adapt to different climate conditions, variations in water and energy availability, and diverse regulatory environments.
These realities require sustained attention to resource security and long-term sustainability, as well as early engagement with utilities and regulators, investment in diverse network paths, and contingency planning that accounts for long construction timelines.
