Abstract:

Malaysia is currently the third highest ranked nation for ICT outsourcing services in the world according to Kearney Global Services. Outsourcing Malaysia has estimated that the outsourcing industry will grow to a RM 7.1 billion industry in the country. This would definitely mean that the growth rate of outsourcing services would have more than quadrupled in the last decade. The huge influx of data centers in Malaysia is only a symptomatic occurrence of this phenomenon. The prime objective of this paper is to ascertain to what extent green practices were being implemented by prominent data centers in Malaysia, namely in the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) region. Specifically, this paper examines the extent of green practices of data centers specifically in the Cyberjaya smart city district. Our findings highlight that most data centers were not practicing green standards in a holistic manner and were more focused on the PUE (Power Usage Efficiency) indicator alone; as it was a cost savings measure. Very little efforts were deployed into recycling and reuse despite huge efforts by the government and private authorities to promote green initiatives. This paper will highlight the shortfall of recycling and reuse activities in data centers towards introducing a more holistic measure for a greener and sustainable data centers.