Cirion steps up LatAm datacenter business

With a US$250mn investment planned for this year, Cirion has begun construction of two datacenters in Chile and Peru as it prepares to inaugurate an expansion of a unit in Brazil.

The company will also focus on interconnection, hyperscalers, content providers and corporate customers.

Cirion's regional portfolio comprises 18 datacenters with total capacity of 40MW and its own terrestrial and submarine network covering 86,000km.

In this interview, Gabriel Del Campo, VP datacenter, cloud and security at Cirion, talks about the company's plans.

BNamericas: What is the status of the datacenter expansion in Brazil?

Del Campo: We are expanding our main center in Cotia, São Paulo. We own and have been developing the datacenter for a long time. The work is about to end and we hope to have it ready for service in December.

BNamericas: Could you provide some details?

Del Campo: This expansion involves some 2MW of capacity. It is a large site that already has a 25MW high-voltage substation and we continue to grow rooms within the property. This is one more expansion and other expansions are planned, which we will announce in due course.

BNamericas: What opportunities are you eyeing with the units under construction in Chile and Peru?

Del Campo: Several. We have consolidated a presence at sites where Cirion has developed a network, and at both sites we have datacenters and a large customer base. The current buildings are reaching their maximum capacity.

We have client demand to continue expanding, so since we cannot expand the current sites, we are looking for new sites that allow us to grow and keep up with demand.

They are larger buildings with greater energy capacity. In both places, we are No. 1 in interconnection in terms of traffic. We have both carriers and cloud providers and other connectivity companies and content providers as clients. To this, add all the corporate clients.

BNamericas: What are the main demand accelerators?

Del Campo: From the corporate market perspective, it’s digital transformation. The second is customer access to public clouds; where local public clouds are present, demand for interconnection is high. Third, I would say, is greater development of streaming content.

BNamericas: Is the company eyeing other markets?

Del Campo: Yes, and we will announce them as soon as we have the plans approved. But yes, we are also looking closely at the Latin American markets in which we operate, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico. And we are looking not only at the main cities but also secondary ones, cities that urgently need interconnection and traffic.

We have three datacenters in Brazil, in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba. But we are also thinking of expanding to other areas in Brazil. The same goes for Mexico.

BNamericas: What units are you planning for those localities?

Del Campo: We aim to host the entire interconnection ecosystem, which will be similar to the one [in Chile and Peru].

We have traditionally designed datacenters for the enterprise and interconnection markets. With this new demand from hyperscalers and interconnection ecosystems, it is not only large capacity but also higher power densities. We believe that the new datacenters will be much larger [than the ones we have developed so far]. The new ones will be similar to those in Chile and Peru.

We have 40MW installed in the region and with all this growth that we are anticipating – Peru's is only 20MW – the scale will be much larger.

BNamericas: How are you solving the need for energy?

Del Campo: We work closely with local power distribution companies. Both in Chile and Peru, we are in the open market in terms of generation and distribution. We have very good relationships with local companies and we work with them to grow not only in energy but in clean energy supply.

We want to have the greatest amount of clean energy available, but that depends a lot on the energy matrix of the countries. When it’s possible to buy a guarantee certificate, we do it.

By the end of the year, we will reach 53% of consumption coming from clean energy