CenturyLink expands Santiago data center

Communications and IT services provider CenturyLink has added a new modular unit to its Tier III data center in Chilean capital Santiago in order to house additional colocation, hosting, security and cloud services.

The new unit is housed in the existing Tier III facility in Santiago's Huechuraba municipality. CenturyLink has 18 data centers in the region and 720,000km of fiber globally.

The first phase of the prefabricated one-floor eCentre has a capacity to consume 1,500kW. But the design includes a future second floor with an additional capacity of 120 racks.

Like the company's 18th data center that came online in Quito last August, the eCenter in Chile is seismic-proof. CenturyLink's VP sales of cluster South America, Luis Piccolo, told BNamericas at the time that the modular concept was applied to the Chile center to install additional capacity as needed.

"We have sustained demand. Datacenters evolve over time, new technologies are incorporated. But the essence is the same, which is to guarantee availability and security," he said.

Piccolo highlighted the country's stable energy supply and its role as an important hub for Latin American operations of multinational companies.

When acquiring the operations of Level 3 in November last year in a US$34bn buy-out deal, CenturyLink, said it would expand service offerings by adding IT consulting services such as big data analytics, managed security services, hosting, and SaaS.

Chile hosts datacenters from Google, Entel, Sonda and Telefónica and is seen as an attractive destination given its stable economy and cheap energy prices. Amazon Web Services has indicated it may build a data center in Chile.