Data Centers
In recent years, Colombia has made significant investments in the construction of data centers that favor the consolidation and growth of the country's tech sector. More than 20 data processing centers have been established, with important companies such as IBM, a market leader, and Hostdime Inc, who in 2020 started the construction of Latin America’s largest Tier IV certified Data Center in Tocancipa (Cundinamarca).
Why invest in the data center sector in Colombia?
Colombia has a large and outstanding data center industry in the region
- Frost & Sullivan predicts that Colombia will be the third-largest market in the region for data centers by 2021, with an 8.4% market share. .
- According to Frost & Sullivan, Colombia’s strategic location will help the country increase its share in the regional market by 1% from 2017 to 2022, to reach approximately 9%.
- Several international companies have decided to increase their capacity to meet the growing demand in Colombia. IBM built a technological complex with 5,000 m2 of available space. This data center achieves a power of 1.9 megawatts with two 100 percent redundant generators. In 2016, Claro tripled its space since they doubled their operations in recent months and now serves 600 large companies in the country and it is becoming a cloud services hub for 8 countries in the region. Telefonica, Level 3, and ETB are also expanding their operations.
Colombia has a high-quality telecommunications infrastructure
- Colombia has 11 submarine cables which provide excellent international connectivity with fast data transmission and stability.
- At present, 98% of the municipalities in the country are connected to the world through a fiber-optic network.
Colombia has optimal power connectivity and operators
- Over 65% of the country's electricity comes from environmentally friendly hydropower with an outstanding quality. According to the World Economic Forum, Colombia ranks first in Latin America and eighth in the world in the Energy Architecture Performance Index 2017 (WEF, 2017).
- In recent years, 529 power generation projects were registered with UPME in various stages of development, with an installed capacity of up to 15,771 MW.
- Colombia has a robust business sector to meet the energy demands of the industrial sector, with large companies such as EPM, Gas Natural Fenosa, and Celsia Group.
Qualified human resources
- In 2019, more than one million students in Colombia graduated from software and IT services related programs, including systems engineering, industrial engineering, electronic engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering, mainly in Bogotá, Antioquia, and Valle del Cauca (Labor Observatory, Ministry of Education).
- Colombia offers opportunities for scalable operations in 6 metropolitan areas, each with more than one million residents: Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, and Cartagena (DANE).
What are the geographical conditions and risks to set up data centers in Colombia?
- According to studies by the Colombian Geological Service, the annual seismic trend in Colombia indicates that earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 8.0 on the Richter scale occur every thirty years. Colombia has a low rate of natural disasters. There have only been 5 earthquakes above a 6.5 magnitude in the last 16 years.
- Colombia’s temperatures remain constant year round. Climate variations are determined by a city's altitude and its distance from the sea.
- Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, has a favorable climate for data center power consumption. According to SSON Analytics, the Global Data Analytics Centre of the Shared Services and Outsourcing Network, Bogotá is one of the safest places in the region when it comes to natural disasters.
- Cybersecurity is a commitment at the national level. Colombia became one of the first countries in the world to enact a specific cyberspace law (Law 1273) which covers areas such as illegal access to personal information, data interception, data destruction, and the use of malicious software.
Discover investment opportunities in the Data Center sector in Colombia:
- Construction of data centers to meet local demand. The country has 14,000 m2 of data centers for the more than 48 million inhabitants, which creates investment opportunities to expand the supply in this sector.
- Colombia has the ability to meet the high demand of the domestic and foreign market for data processing and storage for various industries (retail, government, finance, telecommunications).
