Opening Keynote Address by Ir Allen Yeung, JP, Government Chief Information Officer, at the "DCD Converged Hong Kong 2017”
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning. It is my great pleasure to join you all at the “DCD Converged Hong Kong 2017”. It has been the 8th annual conference in a row. I would like to thank Datacenter Dynamic’s continual efforts in promoting the data centre market and supporting the industry in Hong Kong.
Data centres are essential digital infrastructure to the development of Hong Kong’s economy and our position as a financial and commercial centre. In connecting the data centres with the world, we have 11 submarine cable systems in Hong Kong with 52.8 Tbps equipped capacity. In the coming two years, two more submarine cable systems will be commissioned, including Facebook and Google's Pacific Light Cable Network, which will connect Hong Kong and Los Angeles directly in 2018 with a design capacity of 120 Tbps and another system connecting Hong Kong and Guam in 2019 with a design capacity of 48 Tbps.
The global connectivity and throughput make Hong Kong a prime location for setting up data centres in the region. In addition to the many existing global and regional data centres, it is encouraging that AWS recently announced to establish a new data infrastructure region in Hong Kong by next year. Also, a Tier-4-ready data centre built on the first dedicated data centre site in Tseung Kwan O, Mega Plus, was opened last month. These endorse Hong Kong's competitive edge and strengths as an Asia hub for doing business and in this digital era, as a regional data hub.
Hong Kong is home to about 3 700 regional headquarters and offices of the world’s leading multinational corporations. And our position as an international financial and commercial centre naturally attracts significant international data flows. In addition, Hong Kong's sound legal system, pro-business environment, robust enforcement for data protection and privacy, as well as free flow of talent and information, make Hong Kong the trusted gateway to the Mainland China; enterprises are leveraging Hong Kong’s position into or out of Mainland China. With these advantages, the demand of data centre services in Hong Kong will continue to grow rapidly.
Digital globalization technologies, such as cloud computing, big data analytics, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, etc., and the associated monetisation of these technologies, have transformed the landscape of the global economy. This transformation creates soaring flows of data, which underpin and innovate the values of the movement of goods, services, finance, and people. Data is poised to be the new currency in a digital economy and a new fuel to innovation.
Meanwhile, in our increasing interconnected world, cross-border flow of digital information become more and more important to economic development and opportunity. Data-fueled technologies will be an essential driver for innovation, productivity gains, and economic growth. Multinational corporations are going for high-speed data transmission and processing platform across borders. Leveraging our unique advantages under “one country, two systems”, together with the fully liberalised regime and sophisticated ICT infrastructure, Hong Kong is well positioned to be the prime location of a neutral global data hub for cross-border data flows between East and West. Aggregating international data could enhance the development of big data and digital economy, as well as improving the operation efficiencies and strengths of companies in Hong Kong.
The 2017 Policy Address delivered last month has outlined a few major initiatives to support smart city development in Hong Kong, including our plan to publish the Smart City Blueprint for Hong Kong by the end of 2017. To facilitate the delivery of e-government services in a more reliable and efficient manner, we will revamp the government cloud infrastructure and build a big data analytics platform for government wide adoption and usage. Each new infrastructure will contribute toward making Hong Kong a smarter city, and will mean more new opportunities for the Hong Kong ICT industry.
Against these advantages and opportunities, the Government is committed to promoting Hong Kong as a premier data centre hub under a multi-pronged approach. The Government will continue to increase the supply of data centres by releasing more dedicated data centre sites for high-tier data centre development, and by facilitating redevelopment and conversion of industrial buildings into data centres.
I am sure this conference provides many insightful sharings on the latest technology and trend on data centre and its usage. I wish the conference every success.
- ENDS -
