Globe to boost PH data center talent pool
The Globe Group is on the quest of developing a local talent pool with specialized skills related to running and maintaining data centers whose demand has been on the rise because of the digital pivot.
In a statement on Thursday, ST Telemedia Global Data Centers (STT GDC) Philippines—a unit of the Ayala-led company—said it has set up partnerships with De La Salle University, the University of Santo Tomas and National University to meet this goal.
The Globe’s data center arm is also sourcing talent from the country’s pool of engineers to hone their skills in mechanical, electrical and computer engineering.
“Technology and talent, especially in the data center industry, are always going to be scarce, particularly in terms of looking for people with international hyperscaler experience. And so what we’ve been doing is developing the talent as well in the country,” said Carlo Malana, president and CEO of STT GDC Philippines.
Asked how many talents they are eyeing to hone, Globe told the Inquirer: “No specific number.”
According to real estate expert JLL, which has been monitoring data center developments, the lack of skilled professionals has been encouraging the data center sector to ramp up talent programs. Apart from the Philippines, it noted that markets like Taiwan and Malaysia are also dealing with the same problem.
JLL noted the need for more talents as the data center space grows due to increasing demand from hyperscalers, which are entities providing cloud, networking and internet services such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, Alibaba AliCloud, IBM and Oracle. The greater adoption of artificial intelligence, which requires higher data usage, also increases the need for a hub storing critical servers. INQ
