Nearshore Americas
data centers AI

The Case Strengthens for Colombia as LATAM’s Next Data Center Hub

Colombia appears to be emerging as the next frontier for cloud data centers in Latin America.

Chinese telecom giant Huawei activated a cloud point-of-presence (PoP) in the Andean country as part of preparations to build a data center.

Huawei is something of a bellwether in the Latin American cloud market. Its entry into Chile generated such interest among its competitors that Santiago quickly became a regional beacon for cloud data centers.

With more than 9 million gamers, Colombia is the third largest gaming market in the region after Brazil and Mexico. Gaming consumes loads of data, so the service providers have to host their servers in the cloud.

Additionally, Colombia is an ideal location for cloud vendors, who can use the country as a base to offer the service in neighboring countries, including Peru, Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela.

In July, Oracle became the first foreign cloud provider to announce a cloud region in Colombia, after striking a deal to use Claro’s data center.

The rampant growth of data centers is already yielding big dividends in Chile, where cloud services are 10% cheaper than in Brazil, according to 451 Research’s Datacenter KnowledgeBase.

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Latin America is now home to over a dozen cloud regions, with global tech giants, from Google to Microsoft and Tencent to IBM, fighting a brutal battle to win new customers.

As the rising tide of digital transformation fuels the demand for cloud services, telecos are also pouring huge sums of money into building server space. Telefonica and Claro are at the forefront of this race.

Narayan Ammachchi

News Editor for Nearshore Americas, Narayan Ammachchi is a career journalist with a decade of experience in politics and international business. He works out of his base in the Indian Silicon City of Bangalore.

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