June 03, 2016, Bangkok – Singapore’s data center spearhead, “1-Net” as TCCT’s strategic Advisory Partner made a contribution to Thailand’s Digital Economy conceptualized framework and plan by participating in one of Thailand’s most important data center conferences of the year, “Data Center Technologies in 2020”. The conference hosted by the National Science and Technology Development Agency or NSTDA, an organization under Ministry of Science and Technology of Thailand gathered data center people from both public organizations and private sector’s enterprises and was turned to national arena where participants acted as both audiences and speakers shared and learned the same message: data centers make competitive advantages for enterprises and gear Digital Economy forward. So it is essential for us to understand data center type that matches requirement along with technologies, innovation, and data center regulations, and standard.

Dr. Suchatvee Suwansawat, President of the Engineering Institute of Thailand made an opening speech by talking about increasing necessity for ASEAN to make supply meet increasing demand from ASEAN Economic Community and influx of investment. Other topics of discussion include Thailand’s data center readiness, data center compliance, data center technologies, and future data center preparation.

Mr. Lee Kok Lek*, 1-Net’s Vice President for Data Center Engineering and Operation and Advisory Partner of TCC Technology as a panelist shared bodies of knowledge on data center design, construction, and operation. From his perspective, the size matters when we are building data centers. For Uptime Tier III, if a “Commercial” data center hopes to be able to get the right Return on Investment (ROI) for its investors, there is a minimum size of is 2,000 square meters for IT usage space and a total of 5,000 square feet for building space. The higher the operation standards data center achieves, the inefficient is the space yield it can deliver. Therefore an underlining fact is the challenge of achieving the “Engineering Balance” between delivering quality and efficiency.

Mr. Lee Kok Lek continued, “Another thing we learned from the panel is that data center standard only gives us a theoretical framework to ensure that a set of engineering guidelines with defined outcomes are now specified. For Uptime Institute, this was framed in “Ranks” for data center performance based on TierI, TierII, TierIII, and TierIV. The Tier framework also allows us to match data center quality to the specific commercial risks that IT people are willing to take based on what part of the business these IT systems are supporting.”

Most interestingly for data center, even with all above criteria are executed but we do not involve data center operation team in design and building processes, we may only get a “Good” data center but not “Outstanding” one. TCCT has a strong partnership with 1-Net as both companies have the same ultimate goal of creating “Sustainability in Data Center Operation” and delivering trusted services from data centers that stand out to customers in a long run.

Mr. Lee Kok Lek is the Vice President for Data Center Engineering and Operation of 1-Net. There he is responsible for management of the data center operation, construction of the new data center facility under 1-Net’s business expansion.

He has been in the IT and Data Center industries for more than 30 years, he was previously Vice President of Engineering for CSF Asia and Director for Technical services at Equinix Asia for 12 years. During this time, he was responsible for the design and oversight of data center facility development. He has successfully implemented facilities in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan and Hong Kong.