Alibaba, a Chinese multinational technology company specialising in e-commerce, retail, internet, and technology, reportedly plans to build a data centre in Vietnam.
Precise timings, likely address and the size of the planned facility are all still unclear but, according to news service Nikkei, the aim is to store data locally in compliance with legal requirements.
At the moment Alibaba rents space for computer servers from local telecommunications companies Viettel and VNPT to meet the requirements of the localisation law that took effect in 2022 despite opposition from Google, Amazon and others.
Businesses have also been looking for cross-border options. As well as renting out space from data centre operators to store client data locally, Alibaba also backs up data at clients' request at its own server farms located across the region, from Indonesia to Singapore.
Now, however Alibaba plans to build a data centre in Vietnam, not least to keep pace with demand in one of Asia's fastest-growing economies, to keep down costs, and to ensure greater security and control over its information.
Could this presage a data centre boom for Vietnam? State-owned operator Viettel apparently predicts expansion of 15% a year for the foreseeable future – possibly more if a big cloud company like Alibaba invests in the country.
Again, however, such an expansion would be partly down to data localisation rules, which have benefited the state's ability to access data and have also boosted cloud providers that already have server farms in Vietnam, but, says Nikkei, have violated Vietnam’s free trade agreements.
