Kirk LaughlinSTAFF REPORT
CTEX is about to complete the construction of an advanced data center complex in Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The data centers, being built on top of a mountain terrace 60 meter above sea level, are expected to be more advanced than that of mobile operator Digicel’s US$7mn data center in Jamaica.
CTEX (Curaçao Technology Exchange) is building four data centers, one of which is likely to be ready for operation by first half of 2013.Once built, the data centers will deliver secured unified cloud computing, colocation, archival, disaster recovery and managed services.
In addition to data centers, CTEX is also building Network Access Points (NAP). The company stated that each data center will occupy an area of 52,000 square feet and they will cater to the needs of local technology industry.
“Curaçao boasts excellent connectivity. The island today has connections via 5 major submarine cables with two more planned to arrive onto the island by the second quarter of 2013, thus providing immense global connectivity,” said Anthony de Lima, the company’s Chairman and CEO.
CTEX says it chose Curaçao because the island is part of the Dutch Kingdom and is located outside the traditional hurricane belt and major seismic zones.
Curaçao offers excellent fiscal benefits for international companies who conduct business on the island, including 0% import duties on equipment.
Through a partnership with the local government, CTEX is going to leverage ‘sea water air-conditioning (SWAC) system’ to provide low cost cooling for its facilities.
According to the company, another reason that drove it to set up data center in Curaçao is that the island has a multi-lingual workforce.
“The plans are to build four Tier-IV data centers each being 52,000 square feet. ‘CU-1’ the first of the four buildings is at an advanced construction stage while ‘CU-2’ the second of the four is in the final design phase,” CTEX stated.
Other companies have also joined CTEX including VCE (a joint partnership between CISCO Systems, VMWARE and EMC), Zuora and others to launch the advanced cloud computing services using a unified computing infrastructure. These services provide customers with a subscription based computing model thus eliminating the need for upfront capital expenditure on expensive computing equipment.
“Because of the interest of various carriers to use Curaçao as a major network access point (NAP), we’ve also incorporated an advanced carrier grade interconnection fabric which will allow global carriers to interconnect in Curaçao and go on to the rest of the region,” Lima added.
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