Our CEO Noah Drake joined two separate sessions at #DCDConnect APAC 2026 in Bali.
The first was an investment roundtable on Australia, alongside leaders from CDC, DCI Data Centers, Zerra DC and Data Centres Australia. The numbers framing the discussion are striking. Australia’s data centre market has grown roughly 40-fold in two decades, with two-thirds of that expansion since 2020 — yet a supply gap of between 700MW and 1.7GW could open up by 2028. The question on the table: how does Australia govern responsible development in an era where speed to market is everything?
The second was a panel related to SIJORI — the Singapore–Johor–Batam growth triangle that is becoming Southeast Asia’s first real attempt at a cross-border digital ecosystem. Each market brings a distinct strength: Singapore as the regional connectivity hub, Johor as one of the fastest-growing data centre markets anywhere, and Batam as an emerging development frontier. Fellow panelists included representatives from Bridge Data Centres, CBRE, Indonesia Investment Authority, with the session moderated by Data Center Dynamics.
On the surface, the two sessions addressed very different markets — but both circled the same underlying tension: how do you build fast — but strategically and smartly?
During the first panel, Noah shared that he leans firmly toward speed — but with a caveat the industry too often overlooks. Pre-planning utility resources such as power and water is now a given, whereas pre-planning connectivity often is not. A power-ready site isolated from other data hubs and AI clusters will not drive innovation. The facilities that reach market fastest, and stay viable longest, are the ones where power and connectivity are designed hand-in-hand. He also pressed a point about how the industry could better engage with regulation: not as individual operators negotiating their own exceptions, but as a united front. And critically, that means bringing communities along — being clear about what this infrastructure delivers for them, not only for hyperscalers and investors.
On the SIJORI panel, one of Noah’s shared perspectives was the need for greater harmonisation among the three nations. He stressed that each must decide what it actually wants from this build cycle — and be honest about whether those goals compete with or complement their neighbours’. If the answer is complementary, and there is a strong case that it is, then the logical next step is meaningful deregulation around cross-border traffic and licensing. The salient point: it’s hard to build an integrated ecosystem on top of fragmented regulatory landscapes and unclear stated objectives.
What ties both conversations together is connectivity as strategy, not an afterthought. Whether it is a single Australian metro or three nations trying to act as one, the networks that move data are what turn raw capacity into genuine capability.