Snowflake Sees Malaysia As Top Destination, Important ASEAN Economy For Expansion
From Nor Baizura Basri
SAN FRANCISCO, June 2 (Bernama) -- Snowflake, a global cloud computing company, views Malaysia as one of its top priority markets and among the most important economies in ASEAN for expanding operations, especially amid rising interest from the world’s top companies looking to invest in open data and data centres in the country.
The US-based company, founded in 2012, powers the Data Cloud -- a platform that enables organisations to unify, manage and analyse data with high performance and scalability across multiple cloud providers.
Snowflake ASEAN managing director Satchit Joglekar said there has been significant investment from data centre providers and hyperscalers, with AWS and other large players having announced or launched local infrastructure and capabilities in Malaysia.
“Malaysia is absolutely our top priority right now for investment and expansion. We are closely monitoring this (development) and will continue to support our Malaysian customers even better by working closely with our cloud partners like AWS.
“Our intent is to continue investing more, not just in people, but also in our ability to provide local technological support. We are also ensuring robust investment in our partner ecosystem, which is critical for the success of our local customers across ASEAN, and particularly in Malaysia,” he told Bernama in a video conference recently, ahead of the Snowflake Summit 2025 to be held in this city.
Satchit said Snowflake is not only looking to strengthen its local presence and talent in the country, but is also investing heavily in upskilling its local partners in Malaysia, including regional, local, ASEAN-wide, and global system integrators with a strong Malaysian presence.
Since 2021, Malaysia has approved RM278 billion in digital investments, with RM184.7 billion recorded from data centre and cloud-related projects.
The country’s data centre market is projected to rise to US$13.57 billion by 2030 from US$4.04 billion in 2024, driven by a 22.38 per cent annual growth rate, according to data provided by the Malaysian Investment Development Authority. (US$1 = RM4.26).
Malaysia also made history by clinching the top spot in the Open Data Inventory (ODIN) 2024/25 rankings, with an overall score of 90 and an exceptional 99 in data openness, surpassing 198 countries and leaping significantly from 67th in the 2022/23 assessment.
“In the last 18 months, we (Snowflake) have made significant investments in Malaysia and Thailand. So now, looking at the last two or three years, our operations are no longer solely based in Singapore; we are expanding our teams across the five major economies — Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand.
“As our market opportunity has grown, moving beyond just a data warehouse to a unified data platform and an artificial intelligence (AI) Data Cloud, we are expanding our presence to ensure all major ASEAN economies are covered with a local Snowflake presence,” said Satchit, who has over 18 years of experience in big data, cloud, and cybersecurity.
Satchit said that of the hundreds of customers across the region, almost half are now outside Singapore, with a strong balance across the ASEAN region and sectors including financial services, telecommunications, and retail.
“For example, in Indonesia, we have a very good recent case study with XL Axiata, one of the largest telcos, where we helped them achieve data-driven transformation from their legacy on-premise infrastructure to cloud, resulting in significant cost savings and accelerated data and analytics reporting.
“Similarly, we have great customer stories not only from Singapore but across all major economies and sectors, including financial services, telecommunications, retail, consumer packaged goods (CPG), manufacturing, and the public sector or state-owned enterprises,” he added.
Snowflake’s largest annual event, which kicks off on Tuesday (June 2, in San Francisco) at the Moscone Centre, is expected to draw between 18,000 and 20,000 attendees from across its global ecosystem.
San Francisco, the fourth-most populous city in the US state of California, has been at the forefront of technological innovation since the 2000s, especially with the presence of Silicon Valley, home to a large number of technology companies spearheading developments in fields such as AI.
-- BERNAMA
