Aqaba, Jordan’s southernmost point, on the Gulf of Aqaba, has a strategic
location at the tip of the Red Sea and at the crossroads of Asia and Africa.
The city, with a population of 213,000 in 2020, a land area of 375 sq.km, and a 27-km-long seafront became a special economic zone in 2001,
blossoming into a regional trade hub that exemplifies Jordan’s economic
potential and resiliency.
اضافة اعلان
The Aqaba region
has attracted $20 billion worth of investment to date; this capital has
effectively turned Aqaba into a business hub.
The region has
become an economic engine, attracting billions in tourism and real estate
investments through massive infrastructure and logistics projects on par with
the best international urban standards. As such, Aqaba should become a more
diversified ecosystem and economic catalyst for a wealth of new projects in
logistics, technology, energy, water sector, and manufacturing, to become a hub
with eco-friendly regulations.
The city should
expand its horizon by resorting to green strategy to boost the Kingdom’s
economic growth and benefit from the disruption in high-tech business through
scaling up projects, like data centers, for example. The cloud drives the
digital world and the scalable applications it hosts. Companies are hungry for
processing power. Digitization plays a considerable role in boosting the
economy, the digital economy to be more specific, which keeps on growing with
no end in sight. With this, demand for computing technologies and data
processing also grows.
Over 2.5
quintillion bytes of data are created every day, and the number is growing
rapidly. It is estimated that 1.7 MB of data will be created every second for
every person on earth. This means that data puts enormous pressure on the IT
infrastructure, and that demand for data centers, through which businesses
carry and process colossal data workloads, will also increase. That should
increase the focus on hyper-scale data center infrastructure. Data centers have
always been at the forefront of innovation and have helped the services
business sector to grow.
Aqaba could be the most prominent location for data center investment in the Middle East. Robust network connectivity, inexpensive renewable energy, skilled IT employees, and rapid growth in the adoption of cloud, big data, and Internet of Things services have been solid enablers of growth of the Jordanian data center industry.
Data centers
represent add to the economic growth through the digital economy, and generate
employment.
According to the
research firm RTI International, for one data center five jobs are being
supported elsewhere in the economy. For example, technology giant Google’s data
centers have generated $1.3 billion in economic activity, provided 11,000 jobs
throughout the US, and generated $750 million in labor income. In 2020, the
company announced plans to invest more than $10 billion in offices and data centers
across 11 US states.
Aqaba could be the
most prominent location for data center investment in the Middle East. Robust
network connectivity, inexpensive renewable energy, skilled IT employees, and
rapid growth in the adoption of cloud, big data, and Internet of Things
services have been solid enablers of growth of the Jordanian data center
industry.
The digital
transition should bring Aqaba closer to becoming a regional digital leader and
a competitive regional logistics hub. This transition should help the
outstanding infrastructure to localize services and attract other digital
investments, such as FinTech, cloud service providers, gaming publishers, video
streaming service operators, and content delivery networks.
The writer is general manager at Edgo, worked with
Petrofac, an international EPC energy company, in the Middle East, North Africa
and UK, and he is a regular commentator on regional energy and industrial
matters.
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