Japan has established itself as a global leader in technological innovation with its robust infrastructure, cutting-edge research institutions, and a highly skilled workforce. The island nation is particularly attractive to AI companies looking to expand in the Asia-Pacific region due to its strategic location, offering access to other key Asian markets.

Japan’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry, currently valued at $2.2 trillion, is expected to soar by more than 50% to $3.4 trillion by 2025. As AI takes its firm foothold, reshaping industries like manufacturing, finance, automotive, gaming, and medicine, Japan’s AI ecosystem of 2,200+ AI companies and 500+ AI investors signals significant growth and amazing opportunities for AI companies around the world.

Since 2020, demand for AI data centers in Japan has grown from 5% to 40% while the government support index rose from 2 to 12, as this chart indicates:

The country’s AI-supportive policies that include incentives for innovation and green energy use, along with its various initiatives to promote its AI industry, such as the creation of an AI Strategy Council and the launching of the Hiroshima AI Process and Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), further propel Japan as a global leader in the AI landscape.

Consequently, major AI players are increasingly eyeing Japan as a critical piece of their AI expansion strategies, including Microsoft’s $2.9 billion investment to expand its AI and cloud infrastructure in the country, AWS’s 15 billion investment over the three years to enhance its AI capabilities, and NVIDIA’s planned AI infrastructure builds supported by subsidies from the Ministry of Economy.

Japan’s unique infrastructure challenges

Although Japan is a lucrative market for expansion, the island nation’s unique geographic and demographic complexities can make establishing local infrastructure challenging, including:

• Geological risks – Japan’s geographical location makes it prone to natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, and typhoons. These geological risks can hamper the power supply and operational continuity of data centers, disrupting operations.
• High connectivity costs – connectivity can be expensive in Japan, particularly in densely populated urban areas like Tokyo and Osaka with perpetually high demand. This means building and maintaining low-latency, reliable connections can incur significant costs.
• Skilled labor shortage – the nation’s historically strict immigration policies and aging population, coupled with the nation’s high demand for tech talent, can make it difficult and costly to hire on-site personnel for operations and maintenance.

Protect against geological risks with Zenlayer’s disaster-resilient infrastructure

AI companies that rely on real-time data processing and high availability must account for the considerable risks that potential regional disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, and typhoons pose to uptime and performance.

Zenlayer prioritizes disaster resilience, offering data centers that utilize 2N and N+1 infrastructure setups. This ensures operational continuity even in the event of the unforeseen as power, cooling, and network systems all feature fail-safes. This level of redundancy and resilience is critical for businesses deploying AI applications that need near-zero downtime.

Our 130+ Tbps, hyperconnected network infrastructure is fully redundant and self-healing, featuring dynamic routing that automatically determines and reroutes the optimal path for traffic in the event of localized outage.

Additionally, you can easily establish multi-region redundancy by taking advantage of our global footprint, which enables you to distribute workloads across our other data centers in Japan and nearby Asia-Pacific regions. This helps you minimize the risks of a single point of failure to ensure that critical data processing and storage can continue with minimal interruption, even in the face of natural disasters.

Minimize connectivity costs through Zenlayer’s rich service ecosystem

Although Japan has world-class infrastructure that include extensive fiber networks and top-tier data centers, the expense of maintaining these systems, along with geographical factors like land scarcity and energy prices, sharply drive up the costs of connectivity.

To help address connectivity costs, we offer an extensive ecosystem of services and partners that leverage our economies of scale to unlock cost-efficient, scalable connectivity options that won’t compromise your performance. Our 10,000+ global peers and partnerships with major data center operators like Equinix, Colt Technology Services, and NTT enable you to easily and cost-effectively access the top networks in Japan with high-quality, local IP transit.

Our recently introduced port-based purchase model also gives you the flexibility to start connecting your training and/or inference clusters from a single port, eliminating the need for multiple, costly connections for essential network services. Purchasing a port within the Zenlayer ecosystem unlocks our entire catalogue of cloud and networking services that include 300+ direct connections to the world’s top clouds, high-speed layer 2 and layer 3 network services, and more. Plus, with on-demand scaling, you can adjust bandwidth and connectivity according to real business needs, helping you minimize costs during periods of lower demand.

We also offer edge AI solutions with popular cards like the 4090, H100, and A100 that let you bring powerful GPU compute closer to users and data sources to reduce latency and enhance real-time processing. Our flexible, competitive quarterly billing and upcoming on-demand deployments via zenConsole give your business unmatched agility and scalability to respond rapidly to fluctuating demands.

Overcome skilled talent shortage with Zenlayer’s global O&M services

Japan’s aging population, limited immigration, and surging labor demand for high-tech fields like AI can make it hard to source technical talent needed for seamless day-to-day operations, disrupting everything from routine maintenance to troubleshooting technical issues.

To bridge the personnel gap, we offer decades of data center expertise and a full suite of managed data center services to ensure that your AI business has the technical support you need for efficient, reliable operations. Zenlayer offers the following services across our 300+ global locations:

• Hardware purchase, transport, and delivery
• Site selection guidance
• Customs clearance assistance
• Deployment and configuration support
• Equipment and network monitoring
• Dedicated on-site technical support

In addition, to help you choose the right data center for your AI operations, our experts put together this handy checklist of recommended criteria:

• High reliability and availability – AI data centers should adhere to T3/T3+ operating standards, such as our data centers in Tokyo, to ensure ample power for high-quality service continuity.
• High power density – some applications, especially those involving deep learning and training, demand more processing power that can reach 10KW per cabinet. We offer data centers strategically located in Tokyo and Osaka equipped with such power density.
• Efficient cooling – AI hardware generate a ton of heat, so advanced water- or air-cooling systems are a must to ensure performance and uptime. Our data centers feature N+1 configuration, which provides an additional backup for every set of cooling systems and 2N, which guarantees a complete duplicate of the entire cooling infrastructure for optimal redundancy.
• Scalability – as with most other business applications, the ability to quickly scale resources in response to changing demands is essential. Zenlayer data centers offer plenty of space, and our experts can provide recommendations as you strategize for growth.
• Superior connectivity – high-speed, low-latency networking underpins real-time data processing, with optimal cluster distances being under 50 meters.

We offer 11 data center locations in Japan, with 10 in Tokyo and 1 in Osaka. Here’s a snapshot of a few of our data centers in the region:

Leveraging our sizable footprint throughout Japan’s most densely populated urban areas, you can quickly and easily to connect to clouds, on-prem stacks, and other data centers where your data is hosted to optimize resource allocation, improve user experience, and comply with local data sovereignty.

Additionally, our decades of experience helping businesses succeed in Asia means we guarantee compliance, no matter where you choose to establish your presence. Our 24/7 live support team is always standing by to help with any issues you may encounter, resolving 95% of trouble tickets within 4 hours.

Streamline your AI infrastructure with Zenlayer

Our expertise comes from experience. We’re already helping AI customers in Japan accelerate infrastructure expansion and seamlessly interconnect global AI clusters.

Our recent successes include an automotive financial provider leveraging our colocation and managed data center services to build their AI data center in Tokyo, a blockchain company enhancing service delivery with our Fabric for AI, and a tech provider using our ecosystem to create AI clusters for training and inference.

Zenlayer’s integrated service ecosystem and end-to-end solutions are designed to meet the evolving needs of your AI business, ensuring seamless operations, ultra-low latency connectivity, and high-performance GPU compute to power your AI builds.

Contact a Zenlayer AI expert for today to kickstart your project with a free consultation.