Odata to invest US$1.3bn in new Colombia datacenter campuses

Brazil’s Odata, controlled by US company Aligned Data Centers, announced plans to invest US$1.3bn to develop two new datacenter campuses in Colombia, called BG02 and BG03.

Works are already underway on the two projects, which are an addition to the datacenter BG01, activated in 2019. They are located in the Occidente free trade zone in Mosquera and in the free Metropolitana trade zone in Tenjo, both in Bogota’s Cundinamarca department.

The bet is on offering the structures to host a future cloud region for a large cloud provider, either AWS, Microsoft or Google, Odata CEO Ricardo Alário told BNamericas.

These major cloud companies often set up a cloud region structured with three interconnected availability zones (AZs), or unique datacenters, for redundancy and latency purposes. 

“The reason we’re going for three datacenters is because we want to create an architecture for the eventual arrival of a large cloud company for a cloud region. That’s the idea,” said Alário.

Odata is holding talks, but for now it has no anchor-tenant for the projects.

At present, Oracle is the sole public cloud player to have a cloud region in Colombia. However, Oracle’s Colombian cloud region has a different structure to the three AZs, as it is smaller and hosted at Claro’s datacenters.

CAPACITY AND SCHEDULE

The first phases of both campuses are due for the second half of 2026.

Alário said the exact size and capacity of the first stages will depend on demand from future clients. However, both BG02 and BG03 are expected to start with around 5-10MW capacity in their first buildings.

Previously announced and initially scheduled for this year, BG02 is projected to have a total capacity of 24MW when fully developed.

BG03, in turn, is projected to reach 120MW, making it the largest datacenter project in the country.

Alário said BG03 will be the first datacenter connected to Colombia’s high-voltage transmission grid, unlike other sites that are connected to the medium-voltage distribution grid.

BG02 and BG03 will both rely on Delta Cube (Delta³) cooling, an air-cooling technology developed and patented by Aligned.

Unlike conventional methods that push cold air into rooms, the technology captures and removes heat directly at its source. Delta³ is also prepared to be integrated with liquid cooling systems if necessary.

The datacenters’ location in free trade zones is seen as another advantage, according to Alário. 

Colombia has an estimated 60-70 free trade zones. In addition to being walled and protected, they offer tax exemptions and benefits and charge clients for land use – which tends to be more expensive in these zones.

For Odata’s potential clients, in particular, all servers that will be purchased and installed are exempt from import tax.

Since there are no server manufacturing facilities in Colombia, “it’s as if my client were buying directly from the United States,” said the CEO.

GROWING MARKET

Odata’s focus, especially with BG03, is on offering infrastructure capable of processing the massive volume of data that the largest cloud and AI providers demand.

Considering the current 14.6MW capacity of BG01, which is undergoing an expansion, Odata's Colombian project entails creating around 160MW in datacenter capacity by 2026. That would be more than three times the current capacity in the country, estimated at 48MW.

In addition to Odata, Ascenty is developing its first Colombian datacenters in the Bogotá area, with two units totaling 20MW, 18,500m2 and with 2,600 racks. 

Ascenty’s project, initially scheduled for later this year, was pushed back to 2025. The company does not see Colombia's enterprise market as fully mature yet.

Chile’s GTD is currently working on a second Colombian datacenter, in Barranquilla, to be inaugurated in 2025. 

Cirion, meanwhile, plans to expand its datacenters in Bogotá as part of a US$327mn investment plan for datacenters, cables and its general connectivity ecosystem in Latin America.

According to market estimates, Colombia has over 350MW in datacenter capacity in the planning phase that will materialize in the coming years.