DIGITAL REALTY
experience no matter whether they ' re in Jakarta or Amsterdam ,” Davidson explains . “ Right now , you can go into a lot of tier two and tier three markets and buy space in a data centre . The supply exists . However , if you do that , you ' re going to be managing different philosophies , operational styles , and customer experiences .” Rather than manage dozens of relationships with different data centre operators operating within dozens of different regulatory frameworks with different ways of doing business and different levels of technical sophistication , “ the advantage of Digital Realty is that you can choose between 290 different sites around the world and be sure that you get the same experience in just about every single one of them ,” Davidson says . “ They ' re going to have the same portal , the same command structure , the same user experience that allows you to scale as fast as possible . It ' s that unified , ubiquitous experience that our 20-30 key customers value from us because , for them , a data centre is just a vehicle to help them achieve their business goals ; they don ' t want to be managing data centres .”
This demand for ubiquitous data centre experiences from a core customer base is the thing that ’ s driving Digital Realty ’ s massive expansion throughout APAC . “ We ' re pushing to create this unified environment in as many new markets as possible . That ' s what ' s driving our strategy , whether it ' s in Australia , Hong Kong , India , or Japan ,” Davidson explains . Of course , creating a totally uniform , ubiquitous solution that delivers the speed and convenience of a tier one market like Northern Virginia in a country with a very different regulatory , infrastructural , and cultural landscape , like India ( where Digital Realty is currently expanding through its multi-billion dollar joint venture with Brookfield Infrastructure ) is no mean feat .
SIN12 , Singapore
Ubiquitous Experiences in Diverse Markets “ Each market is different ,” explains Davidson . “ Part of what I do is put together the regulatory and business framework to ensure that , no matter how different things may look when you part the kimono , so to speak , the market feels exactly the same as any other to our customers .”
The first part of entering a new market revolves around creating the right governmental and regulatory strategy to support Digital Realty ’ s plans for the country . APAC ’ s deregulation that we mention earlier may be progressing quickly , but the region ’ s markets are still broken up into three tiers .
72 December 2021