Chile's Sonda looking at hyperscalers for its datacenter business

Chilean IT services and consulting firm Sonda is looking at the hyperscale segment to reinforce its datacenter operations as it continues to assess investors for this line of business.

The “deployment of hyperscalers, both public and private” in its sites was highlighted by the company during its quarterly results presentation as one of its mid to long-term commercial priorities, although no specifics were provided.

Other mid to long-term priorities include migration projects to public and private clouds for various clients; cybersecurity systems; comprehensive communications for connecting large industrial zones; and communications management for the mining and forestry industries.

In February, Sonda CEO José Orlandini said in reply to BNamericas during a press session that three companies had been shortlisted as potential investors for its datacenter business.

Orlandini said a decision on the chosen partner was expected to be made by the end of March. Santander is Sonda's financial advisor for the process.

The mention of hyperscalers in the presentation suggests that this is the model pursued by the company for the business when negotiating with investors.

Among those said to be looking at Sonda's datacenter assets are global digital infra funds, some of which are likely focused on service provision to big content, internet and public cloud companies. 

Sonda has four datacenters. They are a tier IV site in Santiago; two tier III datacenters, one in Santiago and the other in Minas Gerais, Brazil; and one datacenter at its corporate offices.

Each of these datacenters, which the company claims to be “among the most reliable and modern in Latin America,” have their respective network operations centers (NOC) to enable proper service provision to clients.

During the Q1 presentation, Sonda said it has US$730mn in opportunities in cloud and datacenter solutions in its pipeline.

The company reported 23.7bn pesos (US$25mn) in revenues for its digital services business, which includes platform services, cloud and datacenter, in the quarter, down 8.2% year-over-year.

Total revenues grew 15.7% to 205bn pesos, bolstered by higher sales in transactional business and digital business. In constant currency, revenues were up 14.8%.

According to Sonda, sales highlights for the quarter included “additional businesses” in Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul Infovia Digital contract, a new security contract with the Santiago municipality of Vitacura, the expansion of a security contract in Uruguay, and a new fleet management contract for Mexico's high-speed train.