With the new Monet submarine cable to the US and the new SAC submarine cable to Africa, the connectivity in Brazil is growing by leaps and bounds. In conjunction with this growth the cloud/data center business is getting stronger. Global provider Equinix has opened a $69m International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in São Paulo, Brazil, the company's largest to date.
The facility in Santana de Parnaíba, dubbed as SP3, has expanded the company's portfolio in the country to five data centers with one more to be added following the completion of the acquisition of Verizon's data centers in the Americas which include one building in São Paulo. The opening of the data center followed demand from enterprises, financial services firms and cloud and IT providers to interconnect with business partners at the digital edge.
The first phase of SP3 provides a total capacity of 725 cabinets. Upon completion of the multi-phase build out, the facility will provide a total capacity of 2,775 cabinets, doubling Equinix's available space in Brazil, and making SP3 the largest multi-tenant data center in Latin America, according to Equinix.
SP3 has over 215,000 sqf of gross data center space, of which more than 90,000 sqf will be collocation space when fully built out. The building has a power of nearly 13.3 MW and a PUE of 1.35 once fully operational.
Karl Strohmeyer, president of Americas, Equinix, said: "Our continued growth in Brazil highlights strong demand for hybrid cloud and greater interconnection as enterprises are looking to move to a globally distributed architecture so they can better interconnect people, locations, clouds and data at the edge of corporate networks."
Equinix's São Paulo operations serve as a business hub for approximately 1,000 companies including 270 cloud and IT services companies and more than 70 telecommunications carriers. Equinix may continue investing in Latin America and we wouldn't be surprised to see additional data center expansion by Equinix in the region over the next few years.
More Brazil Data Centers
Brazilian data center services provider Ascenty has secured $190m to help finance five facilities under construction and further expansion. The syndicated funding was led by four financial institutions, including ING and Itaú BBA. The company has not disclosed the name of the other two organizations.
In addition to its expansion in the Latin America region, the money, set to be used over a period of five years, will be used to refinance existing debt.
The five new data centers currently being built across the region will expand the operator's footprint by 85%. All facilities are expected to open before the end of 2017.
Chris Torto, CEO of Ascenty, said: "We decided to increase our debt financing to allow us to accelerate the company's expansion into new markets. In 2017, we will launch five new data centers, which will be used to help reduce the shortage of high quality technology services across a range of market verticals in Brazil."
"In a time when the country's economy is being challenged, this new debt financing provides proof of last year's great results as well as renewed commitment from our banking partners for Ascenty's healthy expansion."
Ascenty has also revealed that its business grew 75% in 2016 when compared to 2015.
Torto continued: "This growth happened because Ascenty has world class data center infrastructure and that is the reason why we are the ones to which the main global technology companies in the country go to."
Following the growth and financing results, Ascenty has also announced that it has initiated operations at its first data center in São Paulo and fifth hub in Brazil. The São Paulo 1 facility had a building cost of $32m and counts with 4,000 sqm of hosting space and 10 MVA of power.
In addition to São Paulo 1, the company operates data centers in Campinas, Jundiaí, Hortolândia and Fortaleza. However, despite just cutting the ribbon, Ascenty is also building a second data center, São Paulo 2, which is expected to open in April 2017.
In February, Ascenty announced it will be opening its eight colocation facility in Rio de Janeiro in an investment that is set to reach $48.2m. Roberto Rio Branco, marketing, institutional and commercial director at Ascenty, said: "Within our expansion plans, the Rio de Janeiro market is extremely important."