LinkedIn has opened its first data center in Singapore, spanning 23,500 square feet in Jurong. This is one of six data centers for LinkedIn globally, and the first outside the United States.
LinkedIn has invested S$80 million ($58.7 million) so far in the new data center, which was established to enhance the experience for the fast-growing base of LinkedIn members and clients across the Asia-Pacific region.
With the facility the enterprise social media company aims to imrpove speed and reliability of APAC members' access to LinkedIn’s services as they connect to professional opportunities on the network.
Since January 2013, the number of LinkedIn members in APAC more than doubled to reach over 85 million members at the end of 2015. This includes more than 1 million members in Southeast Asia (of which more than 1 million are in Singapore), 34 million in India and 7 million in Australia.
LinkedIn also counts prominent leaders as its influencers, including Narendra Modi (Prime Minister of India), Piyush Gupta (CEO of DBS Bank), Tony Fernandes (Group CEO of AirAsia), Shinzo Abe (Prime Minister of Japan) and Andrew Penn (CEO of Telstra). Over the same period, LinkedIn’s revenue in the region more than tripled.
The new data center in Singapore processes all of LinkedIn’s online traffic in the Asia Pacific region and will also handle about a third of global traffic. It will also complement the continuing growth in LinkedIn’s storage and processing needs globally – in 2015, this growth was 34%.
The smart design features are also expected to reduce the annual energy consumption of the data centre by a magnitude that is equivalent to powering about 100 private homes in Singapore. For more information about the data centre, please click here.
“Asia Pacific is our fastest growing region in terms of member base outside of the US,” said Olivier Legrand, managing director of LinkedIn in Asia Pacific. “Singapore is the natural choice for us to locate this new data center, as it is already our Asia Pacific headquarters, and it offers the cutting-edge infrastructure and talent we need,” said Legrand.