Spotlight: Latin America's public cloud regions

With the opening of Microsoft's first cloud region in Mexico last week, Latin America now has 15 public cloud regions deployed in four countries: Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Colombia.

They belong to Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle, Huawei and Google.

Cloud regions are clusters of datacenters, generally comprising three or more sites often called availability zones, aimed at storing and processing data, and offering services and digital content locally.

As demand for streaming, gaming and cloud services soars, so does the need to get that content as close as possible to end-users, hence the spread of datacenters. This is important not only to reduce latency, which is the time needed for delivery of information, but also to provide more data management security for enterprises and governments.

Regulators and other authorities require that certain data must be kept locally – otherwise known as data sovereignty or data residency – which also helps to explain the proliferation of cloud regions with availability zones, in addition to many other types of data structures, such as edge points, points of presence, nodes and local zones.

BNamericas takes a look at the public cloud regions and the availability zones of the main providers in Latin America.

MICROSOFT

Microsoft now operates two cloud regions in Latin America.

In Mexico, the newly launched Mexico Central cloud region, in Querétaro, operates with three availability zones. The project was first announced in February 2020.

The hyperscale cloud region will serve local companies that need to run their services on Mexican soil, as well as global organizations that want to leverage the Mexican region to accelerate their own digital transformation.

In Brazil, the company operates a major cloud region in São Paulo, dubbed Brazil South, which also has three zones. This region was launched in 2014.

Brazil South is supported by a “sub” cloud region in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil Southeast), opened in 2021, although no longer officially listed as a cloud region by the company.

As BNamericas previously reported, Microsoft is building two new datacenters in Brazil: in Hortolândia and Sumaré. These sites will add to the São Paulo cloud region.

In addition to Brazil and Mexico, the company is working on its first cloud region in Chile. Microsoft says that the region is "coming soon”.

In December 2021, Microsoft submitted the Quilicura datacenter initiative for environmental evaluation, more than a year after announcing it would set up an Azure region in Chile. The project was budgeted at US$317mn at the time.

According to the project description, the first facility will occupy an area of approximately 68,000m2, with a redundant electrical substation of 26MVA (which will be the main source of energy) and a double-circuit high-voltage line (2x110kV), connecting the datacenter substation to the existing Chacabuco substation.

The datacenter is part of Microsoft’s Transforma Chile four-year plan, disclosed in September 2020. 

Worldwide, the company reports having 60 cloud regions, a number which it claims to be more than any other cloud provider.

ORACLE

Oracle inaugurated a second cloud region in Mexico in 2023, located in Monterrey, as well as a second in Valparaíso, Chile, and its first in Colombia, in capital Bogotá.

With the new launches bringing the total to seven, Oracle became the public provider with the most cloud regions in Latin America: two in Brazil, two in Mexico, two in Chile and one in Colombia. It was also the first to have two in Chile and the first to launch a cloud region in Colombia.

In Brazil, the company operates the cloud regions Brazil East (city of São Paulo) and Brazil Southeast (Vinhedo, in the São Paulo metropolitan region), opened in August 2019 and May 2021, respectively.

In Mexico, Mexico Central (Querétaro) was inaugurated in July 2022 and Mexico Northeast (Monterrey) in September 2023.

The Chile Central (Santiago) and the Chile West (Valparaíso) regions were activated in November 2020 and December 2023, the same month that Colombia Central (Bogotá) went live.

In Brazil, the company has held talks with government authorities about potentially setting up a “sovereign” or even a government-oriented cloud region in the country.

“We've been investing a lot in the region. And we now have three times more regions in Latin America than our main competitors,” Gabriel Vallejo, Oracle's COO for Latin America, told BNamericas in December.

At present, Oracle reports 66 datacenters distributed in 48 cloud regions in 24 countries.

AWS

The global leader in public cloud contracts, AWS operates one cloud region in Latin America, with three availability zones (unique datacenters).

The São Paulo cloud region went live in 2011 as one of the first of a public cloud player in Latin America.

From this main zone in São Paulo, the company offers regional connectivity via Edge Locations and Local Zones for different cities across the region. These structures are located in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Fortaleza, Querétaro, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Santiago and Lima.

AWS plans to open its first Mexican region, the group’s second in Latin America, in early 2025. In total, the company aims to invest over US$5bn in three datacenters in Mexico.

AWS says other cloud providers often define a cloud region as a single datacenter, but in its own case, each region consists of a minimum of three, isolated and physically separate availability zones within a geographic area. 

Worldwide, AWS Cloud spans 105 availability zones within 33 cloud regions, in addition to 41 local zones.

HUAWEI

In Latin America, Huawei has three main cloud regions, in Chile, Brazil and Mexico, and two country regions, in Argentina and Peru. These five regions comprise nine availability zones.

Each zone contains one or more physical datacenters. In the case of Huawei, they usually comprise three sites, key for redundancy, backup and latency purposes.

Huawei is expanding its Brazil cloud region with a third availability zone, which it planned to open in the first quarter this year. BNamericas has been unable to confirm whether that activation has taken place.

“In Latin America, Huawei Cloud is the cloud service provider with the most nodes (connectivity spots) in the region. Huawei Cloud promotes the digital transformation of thousands of local customers in industries such as finance, media, retail, logistics, and internet,” the company said in a report last year.

Worldwide, Huawei Cloud operates in 88 availability zones across 30 regions.

GOOGLE

Google operates two cloud regions in Latin America, in São Paulo and Santiago, with three availability zones each.

The São Paulo region was launched in 2017, followed by the one in Santiago in 2022.

The company is now working on a cloud region for Mexico. The project was announced in July 2022 and the region is being developed in Querétaro.

At the time, Google announced a five-year, US$1.2bn plan for Latin America to expand digital infrastructure, support digital skills and foster the entrepreneurial ecosystem, among other initiatives.

Google reports 40 cloud regions and 121 availability zones worldwide, in addition to 187 edge locations, across more than 200 countries and territories.