Brazil’s Hostweb invests in datacenter expansion

Brazilian private cloud provider Hostweb earmarked around 100mn reais (US$20.5mn) for investments in its datacenter capacity, commercial manager Marcelo Vargas told BNamericas.

Of this total, half refers to capex already made in its two existing Tier 3-certified data halls in Fortaleza and half to investments in capacity expansion. The company’s first sites started operations five years ago.

“In the first halls, we've invested around 50mn reais. The forecast is to invest, initially, another 50mn reais, just to kick-start the expansion of our data halls,” Vargas (pictured) said.

Hostweb intends to triple the space of its existing structures, currently hosting 2,100 servers, within three years.

The company has a total of three halls, already built, to be occupied by servers. One of these rooms has already been filled.

At first, the company is investing in a second data hall, targeting a capacity for 4,000 servers. This expansion is already underway. In the future, the plan is to fill the third and last data hall.

Hostweb's main server supplier is Dell. The group has a strategic partnership with the US giant and 95% of Hostweb's equipment comes from the company.

WORKFORCE AND CLIENT BASE

Part of the investments is also expected to go to the expansion of professional headcount.

At present, Hostweb has over 20 open positions in different segments to add to its workforce of 120 “all duly certified” experts, according to Vargas.

In total, the company has over 2,000 unique corporate clients, mainly enterprises that require mission-critical operations and support from verticals such as energy, health, retail and industry in general, said Vargas.

Among these clients are French energy multinational Aker, Brazil’s Ibitu Energia, also dedicated to the renewables segment, and the Termaco logistics group. Home appliances multinational Mallory is another Hostweb client.

“Mallory uses the SAP system, and we brought their environment, which was hosted at the headquarters in Spain, to Brazil. We did the entire migration without stopping and interrupting their operation. Today, Mallory's unit in Brazil runs 100% on Hostweb.”

The expansion of Hostweb's capacity is in line with the growth in demand from both current and new customers, deepening operations in the corporate segments for which it already provides services but reaching other locations, too.

“The idea is to expand these segments to other regions, other states in the north and northeast.”

As an example, Vargas cites Unimed, one of Brazil’s biggest private healthcare groups, whose subsidiary in Fortaleza is served by Hostweb. 

As a natural evolution of this partnership, other Unimed regional subsidiaries, such as Unimed Teresina, in Piauí state, could submit their systems and data to Hostweb’s management.

ORACLE AND GOVERNMENT

Recently, Hostweb announced a contract with Oracle to offer the US multinational's services to customers in the north and northeast, part of a hybrid cloud portfolio push.

The negotiations with Oracle started in 2022, and the contract was formalized in January. Hostweb considered other providers, said Vargas, but Oracle's characteristics, including its cost, put it ahead of rivals.

“We weren't looking for just a public cloud to compete with our private cloud services, but rather for a service we could deliver as a complement to our customers, especially those who already use Oracle databases, and thus provide them updates, performance and software as a service,” according to Vargas.

“Having the largest database in the world today, which is Oracle, complements the services we offer in the market.”

Unlike other public clouds, Oracle's contracts do not suffer FX variation, added Vargas.

On top of that, Hostweb now intends to enter the government segment, offering Oracle cloud services to public companies in the north and northeast. The company created an internal team to tackle these opportunities and is mapping tenders in the public sector, he revealed.

Oracle operates two cloud regions in Brazil, in São Paulo and Vinhedo, launched in 2019 and 2021. In both cases, the regions are hosted with datacenter providers, such as Ascenty.

Hostweb makes the connection with this structure through a network that links to the traffic exchange point in São Paulo and the one in Fortaleza.

The company also services its customers, through Oracle's FastConnect service, directly from its cloud in Fortaleza.

“We deliver this equally to customers. They don't know, don't realize, if they’re accessing here in Fortaleza or Oracle's cloud in São Paulo.”