Internet company LinkedIn has invested $80 million to build a data centre in Jurong to support its growth in the region.
The 23,500 sq ft centre - the firm's first outside of the United States - will process all of the social networking website's online traffic in Asia-Pacific, as well as handle about one-third of its global traffic.
"This will offer our members better user experience," said Mr Olivier Legrand, LinkedIn's managing director for the Asia-Pacific region.
This means users in the region will be able to access the website at a higher speed and with better reliability.
LinkedIn has doubled its membership in the region, which includes China, India, Japan and Australia, to more than 85 million since January 2013. It has more than 16 million members in South-east Asia, of which about one million are in Singapore.
Correspondingly, its revenue for the region more than tripled over the same three-year period.
"Asia-Pacific is our fastest growing region in terms of member base outside of the US," said Mr Legrand.
"Singapore is the natural choice for us, as it is already our Asia-Pacific headquarters, and it offers the cutting-edge infrastructure and talent we need."
Mr Legrand estimates that around 40 per cent of the world's professional workers are in the region and that translates to a potential market of up to 300 million members for the website. This new investment is meant to support that growth potential.
The new data centre will not yield any new jobs, though Mr Legrand pointed out that the company is constantly hiring and has grown from an eight-man office in 2012 to 250 staff now.
"The establishment of the data centre reinforces Singapore's position as the region's leading data management and connectivity hub," said Mr Kiren Kumar, executive director of infocomms and media at the Economic Development Board.
"As more global organisations place greater value in the Asia-Pacific market, Singapore continues to be the ideal location for companies to establish their mission-critical infrastructure, as well as engineering and data analytics talent, to develop innovative solutions for their regional operations."
