DATEC LAUNCHES KUMUL CLOUD INFINITY – PNG’S FIRST SOVEREIGN CLOUD AND AI DATA CENTER
Papua New Guinea has officially entered the age of sovereign cloud computing and artificial intelligence with the inauguration of Kumul Cloud Infinity, the country’s first AI data center.
The state-of-the-art facility was launched yesterday evening by Datec PNG, in partnership with Telikom PNG.
Speaking at the event, Datec Chairman Moses Maladina congratulated the team and thanked customers, partners and government for their support.
“On behalf of the board, management and staff of Datec PNG, I thank you all for joining us this evening for the official inauguration of Kumul Cloud Infinity, Papua New Guinea’s Sovereign Cloud and AI Data Center,” Mr Maladina said.
Mr Maladina said the facility is equipped with advanced computing technology, including NVIDIA H200 GPU capability, designed to handle the massive processing requirements of modern AI.
“We now have the capability here in PNG to run AI workloads, analyze large amounts of information and support sophisticated AI applications, while at the same time providing cloud computing and data-storage services required by Government, state-owned enterprises and private businesses,” he said.
A key feature of Kumul Cloud Infinity is data sovereignty. “Importantly, the data can remain here in PNG. It can be stored and processed onshore, on infrastructure operated in PNG and subject to our own jurisdiction,” he added.
Recognizing PNG’s power challenges, Datec built multiple layers of resilience into the facility, including grid power, UPS, standby generators, and a partnership with Geogas PNG for gas-based power generation.
Specialized cooling systems have also been installed to manage the heat generated by AI computing equipment.
“The objective is straightforward: our customers should not have to worry about what is happening behind the scenes. Their systems should simply continue to operate,” Mr Maladina said.
The Chairman acknowledged international partners CloudSigma, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NVIDIA for bringing world-class technology to PNG.
He also stressed that infrastructure must go hand-in-hand with skills development.
“PNG needs engineers who understand data centers and cloud infrastructure. We need cybersecurity specialists, software developers and data scientists… Building that human capability must therefore develop alongside the infrastructure,” he said.
Datec also announced plans to build a second AI data center in Lae to serve as PNG’s industrial hub and provide geographic redundancy. “The world is moving very quickly in this sector. AI will increasingly become part of how government operate, how business compete and how ordinary people work, communicate and access services,” Mr Maladina said.
Mr Maladina thanked Minister for State Enterprises William Duma for his support, and congratulated Datec CEO Preetam Talukdar, the management team, engineers and all Datec and Telikom staff for delivering the project.
He also thanked CloudSigma, technology partners, and customers for their confidence.”Datec is showing that we can build that capability here. We can store our data here. We can perform AI computation here. We can develop our people here. And we can provide PNG organizations with modern digital infrastructure of an international standard,” he said.
