With an investment of USD 266.5m, STC hopes to future-proof critical structural facilities in line with the Kingdom’s Digital Transformation Programme.
STC will launch three mega data centres in Riyadh, Jeddah and Al-Madina, with SAR 1bn (USD 266.5m) investment. The Kingdom’s telco operator aims to host telecommunications equipment and digital cloud infrastructure, offering higher availability, more flexibility and faster time to the customer. STC adopted Next Generation build technology through modular and prefabricated solutions, affirming business continuity and service uptime. It also enables STC to optimise future expansions with Grow-On-Demand technology and Quick-To-Market solutions.
The three new Data Centers have been built with over 150 prefabricated modules (PFMs), fully equipped with power, thermal management and IT infrastructure. Providing 10.8 MW of critical IT power (white space ready) expandable to 16.8 MW. Phase 2 of the programme already in construction will bring the total Critical IT Power to 40.8 MW. Furthermore, the short-term future will see STC expanding its mission critical white space to more than 105 MW of Data Center IT power across the Kingdom utilizing the same highly resilient model. The new design of the Data Centers has received Tier III Certification for Design & Construction from the global authority “The Uptime Institute” and are fully compliant with local regulations.
These projects represent the first phase of its New Era “Next Generation” Data Centers. Phase1 of this programme is now complete, with new data centres in Jeddah and Madinah already online, and today sees STC’s third new data centre being commissioned in Riyadh.
STC has embraced state-of-the-art design and construction techniques, which is set out to advance the Kingdom’s Infrastructure architecture. The company’s vision is realised through the rapid deployment of multiple data centres specifically tailored to meet the ever-increasing requirements of this giant company. This exciting announcement comes as part of STC’s ongoing achievements to enable digital transformation within the Kingdom and further the country’s National Transformation Program 2020, in line with the Saudi Vision 2030.
Nasser Al-Nasser, STC’s CEO stated: “Yesterday, we announced $500m investment with Ali Baba Cloud and eWTP, and today, we announce investing about SAR 1b in these three data centres. The successful completion and transformation of STC’s mission critical offering, will enable the next step in digital services to be delivered throughout the Kingdom. This first milestone achievement is only the beginning”
Haithem M. Alfaraj, Senior VP of Technology and Operations at STC said: “STC has reached a major milestone in providing next generation data centres, that will meet the current demands for digital infrastructure, with the flexibility toe grow and mature with the digital evolution”
STC’s major objective is to fundamentally transform the Kingdom’s network architecture, moving towards advanced digital software services, and provide resilience enhanced mission critical white space to hosting customers and hyper-scalers. It also aspires to further improve operational efficiencies and scalability, reduce latency, and implement cloud services, artificial intelligence and automation.
