Codisa looks to franchise datacenter model and expand regionally

Costa Rican datacenter company Codisa is looking to replicate the model it is developing in El Salvador in other markets in the region.

Codisa offers IT services and software development for clients in 14 Latin American countries. In Costa Rica it has three datacenters.

The company has just laid the first stone for the construction of a datacenter in El Salvador together with local real estate developer Grupo Aristos.

"We decided that outside of Costa Rica we would use the 'Data Trust, powered by Codisa' brand for our datacenters and our franchise," Ronald Jiménez, president of Grupo Codisa de Costa Rica, told BNamericas.

The company is looking for local partners in El Salvador to deploy datacenters.

"We store data from banks, government, social security and large and medium-sized companies, so in our partners we seek reputation and only later, experience in real estate development," Jiménez said.

Codisa offers experience in the design and obtaining of certificates for datacenters.

The datacenter that the company announced in El Salvador will be the first with tier III certification from the Uptime Institute.

Franchise development is at an early stage and opportunities are expected in other countries in the region.

Aristos has already confirmed its interest in continuing to develop the model with Codisa in other markets. "We have already confirmed our desire and intention to participate, with Codisa we share the values of human development, social development and environmental sustainability," Edwin Escobar, executive director of Aristos in El Salvador, told BNamericas.

Codisa hopes that investment funds are also interested in being part of the projects.

EL SALVADOR PROJECT

The El Salvador datacenter will be initially financed with joint investment from Codisa and Aristos, although the companies do not rule out having to turn to the traditional banking system or investment funds for the later stages of the project.

The Data Trust datacenter will be located in the Altius technology park, developed by Aristos. Construction and start-up require an initial investment of US$30mn, without considering the amount allocated to IT.

The companies estimate that the total investment could amount to US$80mn in the next three years.

The datacenter will have capacity for 322 cabinets and space for approximately 20,000 servers. The start of operations is planned for the last quarter of 2022.

In addition to the 1,500m2 datacenter, the technology park will have seven office towers, with a total of 41,000m2 of built area.

The technology park is in Ciudad Arce in La Libertad department. “We want to bring development and opportunities outside of the capital San Salvador, the park is 37km from the capital. We want not only companies and the datacenter to be located there, but also technical institutes and academia to be able to train personnel and make the ecosystem much more robust,” said Escobar.

Apart from industrial parks, Aristos developments include photovoltaic solar power, installed by the group on rooftops and in solar parks. Escobar said the company has installed 45MW and from this year all the energy demand of its customers is provided by the group.

The company expects to reach 51MW of installed power by next March and is working on the design of a plant to power the new datacenter. Data Trust will have power consumption of 1.6MW.

Jiménez hopes that once the datacenter is built, telecommunications operators will decide to extend their networks to connect the infrastructure. "I am sure that telephone operators and data transport companies will be very interested in this project," he said