Southeast Asia has become one of the world’s most active data centre investment frontiers. Driven by AI and cloud demand, regional capacity is projected to triple to between 5.2 and 6.5 gigawatts by 2030, on the back of a tenfold increase in AI computing demand. Within that story, Indonesia is emerging as a defining hub. The Indonesia data center market was valued at US$2.81 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach US$6.08 billion by 2031, supported by a large digital economy, rising cloud adoption and the government’s push for data localisation.
Billions are flowing in. Microsoft launched its first Indonesian data centre region in May 2025, expected to contribute around US$2.5 billion to the economy, while DAMAC Digital has announced a US$2.3 billion AI-ready facility in Jakarta. National capacity is set to nearly double from 500MW in 2025 to 900MW in 2026. The engineering story is well told. The financial story behind it deserves equal attention, because data centres concentrate three of the hardest problems in corporate finance into a single asset class.
Problem one: project delivery at megaproject scale
Data centre projects move through multi-phase delivery, from design through build to operate, involving multiple contractors, strict timelines and punishing SLAs. The base rates for projects of this scale are sobering: McKinsey research estimates that 98% of megaprojects suffer cost overruns of more than 30%, and 77% run at least 40% late. Without project accounting that tracks cost, resources, and progress in real time, an operator discovers overruns only after they’re unrecoverable.
Problem two: revenue recognition in DBO models
Design-build-operate contracts blend milestone-based construction billing, long-term service agreements and mixed capex and opex revenue streams in a single customer relationship. Under PSAK 72, Indonesia’s adoption of IFRS 15, revenue must be recognised through a five-step contract analysis that separates each performance obligation and allocates the transaction price across them. Applied manually to multi-element, multi-year contracts, this becomes a standing audit risk.
Problem three: operating in real time
Once live, a data centre runs on monitoring systems, billing platforms, customer management tools and maintenance workflows that must stay synchronised continuously. The cost of falling out of sync is measured in outages: Uptime Institute’s research found that 54% of operators’ most recent significant outages cost more than US$100,000, and one in five exceeded US$1 million. Integration between operational and financial systems separates operators who bill accurately and respond instantly from those who leak revenue and breach SLAs.
One backbone, three disciplines
We address these three pressure points as one connected architecture, and each is explored in depth in its own article in this series:
- Project control. NetSuite project accounting, resource management and real-time project costing keep multi-phase builds financially visible from design to handover.
- Revenue recognition. NetSuite and Netgain automate multi-element contract handling and PSAK 72-aligned revenue recognition across capex and opex streams.
- Operational integration. Workato and Celigo connect monitoring, billing, customer and maintenance systems to a NetSuite financial and operational backbone, with real-time alerts and orchestration.
How we help
PS Global works with data centre operators and investors across Southeast Asia, implementing NetSuite as the financial and operational core for the full asset lifecycle. As a multi-year winner of NetSuite’s Asean Partner of the Year award with 18 years in the region, we bring the localisation depth Indonesian projects demand alongside the project, revenue and integration disciplines the asset class requires.
The capital is arriving. The operators who pair it with financial control will be the ones still standing when the market matures. Speak to our team about building that control in from day one.
