MEEZA, which now has a total supply capacity of 24.4MW (megawatts) from operating five data centres, is planning to expand its capacity by 19.5MW over the next two to three years to meet the growing demand in Qatar.
The company, which will Wednesday start trading on the Qatar Stock Exchange, is currently the market leader with about 50% market share based on Qatar estimated supply capacity.
In the data centre industry, MWs are reserved for wholesale colocation customers that require enough power for thousands of servers and related IT hardware.
MEEZA’s demand for data centre-related services is mainly driven by colocation and hosting services as well as IaaS (infrastructure as a service).
According to a recent market study commissioned by MEEZA, the demand for colocation and hosting is expected to rise from $129mn in 2022 to $163mn in 2026, while demand for IaaS is expected to significantly grow from $71mn in 2022 to $279mn in 2026, indicating a huge growth potential for MEEZA over the next few years that can be serviced with an adequate expansion in capacity.
Out of the total ICT market, the data centre market in Qatar accounts for about 0.12% of the global data centre market in 2022. In line with the current global market trends, the demand for data centres in Qatar is expected to grow by 13.3% per annum from 40 megawatts (MW) in 2022 to 66MW in 2026.
Furthermore, total spending demand for Qatar on data centre systems and data centre IT-related services is expected to steadily rise from $0.86bn in 2022 to $1.28bn in 2026.
This growth in demand for data centres is expected to be mainly driven by digital business process as a service (BPaaS), data centre services, desktop as a service (DaaS), data centre systems support, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and application managed services.
Additionally, cybersecurity is also poised to follow the same growth dynamic, with total demand for cyber security service in Qatar forecasted to grow by 10.6% per annum from $347mn in 2022 to $520mn in 2026.
The Qatari data centre space currently features three ICT (information, communication and technology) companies whose data centre colocation capacity is commercially available to third parties as part of their core business. Besides MEEZA, other ICT entities operating data centres in Qatar are Ooredoo and Mannai ICT.
Ooredoo operates five data centres covering a total space of 60,000sq ft and its total supply capacity is estimated to be 22MW (46% market share based on Qatar estimated supply capacity, on par with MEEZA), the MEEZA prospectus filed with the QSE said.
Mannai ICT – an integrated end-to-end solutions IT company in Qatar providing, among others, servers and storage services, peripheral IT hardware services and integrated IT solutions – currently operates one data centre with an estimated supply capacity of 2MW (4% market share based on Qatar estimated supply capacity).
As per the latest Ministry of Communications data, ICT currently contributes to 1.9% of Qatar’s total gross domestic product. Investments in the digital landscape, particularly cloud computing, are at an all-time high as part of efforts to implement Qatar’s digital transformation agenda and construct a knowledge-based economy.
