The facilities offer hyperscalers, cloud service providers, content companies, over the top (OTT) players and enterprises, diverse and highly connected hubs for serving local and international customers.
Damac Data Centres, a global digital infrastructure provider owned by the DAMAC Group, will go live with facilities in Riyadh and Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) before the end of 2023.
The company announced today at LEAP 2023 a further 35 megawatts IT capacity will be built in addition to the 20 megawatts already under construction.
Each facility will launch with 5 megawatts IT capacity in Q4 2023, followed by a further 5 megawatts in Q1 2024. Both facilities will deliver a full 55 megawatts of IT capacity by 2025. The investment in the Kingdom of circa USD $600 million is part of USD$1 billion data centre development strategy.
DAMAC has accelerated its data centre roll outs due to local and international customer demand. Customers are finalising agreements to secure all available capacity within these facilities with deals closing before the end of 2023. The Dammam and Riyadh facilities are Uptime Institute certified Tier 3 classification and provide highly connected hubs in one of the regions fastest developing digital economies.
“KSA holds a unique position in the MENA region. Its borders touch more countries than almost any other and it is an ideal jumping off point for connecting across Africa and the GCC. Our facilities in Dammam and Riyadh offer local diversity as well as rapid access to subsea cable systems that serve regional and global needs,” said Hussain Sajwani, Chairman of DAMAC Group. “KSA has a young, digitally savvy population and a lot to offer in terms of digital innovation and smart cities. We look forward to supporting the growth of its digital economy.”
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the most locally and globally connected regions in the GCC with 14 in-service subsea cables, 11 of which land in Jeddah. The KSA national fibre network offers terrestrial connectivity to all major Gulf markets and acts as a gateway to key regional submarine cable landing stations.
DAMAC’s facilities support Saudi Vision 2030 and its strategy for accelerating development and growth locally.
“We are selecting locations for data centre facilities based on local demographics, the state of digital adoption, and opportunities to support long-term economic growth. Every site location we choose must meet strict criteria based on future demand rather than who needs rack space today,” said Sajwani.
“Our Dammam and Riyadh sites more than meet these criteria and these will be two of several facilities that we are planning in the KSA. We’re excited to ramp up our builds and deliver data centre facilities that serve local market needs.”
The DAMAC Data Centre team has grown rapidly over the last 12 months to support customer demand and new facilities going live. Its globally experienced management team is working with third party suppliers and delivering operational capabilities to serve world-leading businesses. DAMAC enables local digital innovation by delivering new levels of application performance, service performance and user experience, while keeping data in-country.
