Nicholas Toh Takes Over as Group CEO at DCI Data Centers

DCI Data Centers, an arm of Brookfield Infrastructure, has tapped Nicholas Toh to serve as group chief executive officer, bringing more than two decades of experience in data centres, real estate investment and finance to the Singapore-based role.

The Australian national joins the data centre owner and operator this month from Singapore’s ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, where he was a member of the founding team and most recently served as CEO for Northeast Asia. Toh led the data centre service provider’s entry into the British and Japanese markets as well as strategic investments and partnerships into other Asian nations during his tenure at the fast-growing business, part of Temasek portfolio company ST Telemedia.

Prior to joining STT in 2014, Toh was senior vice president at Securus Data Property Fund, a Sharia-compliant data centre fund jointly managed by Keppel and AEM that later exited as Keppel DC REIT. The executive has also worked within Macquarie Group’s banking and financial services group and real estate group.

“Nicholas’s appointment strengthens DCI’s growth trajectory as we look to build on our rapid growth in Australia and New Zealand by deepening our geographic and product strength in these markets in addition to targeted expansion across Asia,” noted Udhay Mathialagan, DCI chair and Brookfield’s global CEO of data centres in a statement.

Growth Down Under

Since Canadian investment giant Brookfield Asset Management acquired DCI from Blackstone in 2019, the Sydney-headquartered business has grown from two sites with less than 10 megawatts of capacity to over 10 sites in various stages of development across Asia Pacific with a total of 120MW.

DCI has two data centres in operation in Australia’s Sydney and Adelaide, as well as seven sites in development in various cities in Australia and New Zealand, including Sydney, Adelaide, and Canberra. The company’s website notes that DCI is also undertaking further site acquisition in the Antipodes, South Korea, Japan, and Indonesia.

DCI started construction last August on AKL02, the second of two new-generation cloud data centres it is building in the Auckland area that is poised to become one of New Zealand’s largest server hubs upon completion. The company’s first New Zealand facility, AKL01, in northwest Auckland is slated to be ready for service in early 2023 and is already fully leased. DCI intends to run its New Zealand facilities from 100 per cent renewable sources.

With offices across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, DCI has recently announced a number of senior management hires including the appointment of Amazon Web Services alum Jae Woo Choi as deputy chief technology officer last September.

Property brokerage Cushman & Wakefield ranked Sydney as the No. 3 overall data centre market in Asia Pacific, with substantial growth in colocation and hyperscale demand, 667MW in operation and 238MW planned or under construction as of the fourth quarter of 2022, according to a December report.