ODATA announced an investment of US$ 1,3 billion for the construction of new data center clusters in Colombia.
ODATA announced on Wednesday (23) an investment of US$ 1.3 billion (R$ 7.4 billion) for the construction of new data center clusters in Colombia. This is just a portion of the R$ 26 billion committed by the company until 2026, as demand from large cloud providers accelerates in Latin America .
The two campuses — as the structures that house the servers are called — will be located in Cundinamarca, a department of the city of Bogotá, which is home to the Tenjo Metropolitan Free Trade Zone.
Ricardo Alário, ODATA’s Latam CEO, said:
The tax advantage is so great that it becomes difficult to compete if you are outside [the Free Trade Zone].
“Much more so than for us, for our customers: they can bring servers, which represent a larger part of the investment when setting up a data center, also with a tax advantage.”
ODATA operates on a colocation model , in which a company designs and builds the physical structure of the data center and allocates equipment such as power generators and chillers. It is up to the client — usually one of the giant cloud providers, such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle — to buy the computers that will be connected to the countless rows of server racks.
The unit, named DC BG03, will be the largest data center campus in Colombia, according to the company, in a project with 120 MW of IT power — a measure used to assess the potential for server allocation in a data center. To give you an idea, the company’s largest campus in Mexico has 150 MW of IT, where the population is more than double that of Colombia.
In addition to offering the largest IT capacity available in the country, DC BG03 will be the first data center in Colombia to be directly connected to the local power transmission system, enabling ODATA customers to have greater scalability and energy stability to support the development of their digital infrastructure.
Along with DC BG03, ODATA will also build the structure for DC BG02, with 24 MW. The expectation is that the first phases of construction will be completed in the second half of 2026, in anticipation of a demand that should soon reach the region.
Explosion of data centers in Latin America
Migration to the cloud and generative artificial intelligence applications are the main drivers for accelerating demand from big techs.
According to Alário, until a few years ago, it was rare for servers to hire 10 MW IT structures. Since the end of 2022, however, the numbers have already started to reach 20 MW or 30 MW. “In the United States and Europe, companies are setting up infrastructure of 100 to 150 MW. Here, a number of customers are already asking for this capacity.”
In addition to offering the largest IT capacity available in the country, DC BG03 will be the first data center in Colombia to be directly connected to the local power transmission system, enabling ODATA customers to have greater scalability and energy stability to support the development of their digital infrastructure.
A new moment
In 2022, asset manager Pátria Investimentos sold ODATA in a deal worth US$1.8 billion. The buyer was the American company Aligned Data Center, also in the colocation sector . The investment projection until 2026 alone is R$26 billion.
Aligned Data Center’s new data centers in Colombia will use a proprietary cooling technology called Delta Cube. Unlike conventional methods that push cold air out of rooms, Delta Cube captures and removes heat directly at its source, creating a more efficient environment.
“It was a radical change [
from Pátria to Aligned ]; it was very much in line with the market’s needs. The timing was very good,”
For him, the exchange between the engineering teams is just one of the reasons for this: local manufacturing capacity in Brazil, supply chain and financial availability are other examples.
READ the latest news shaping the data centre market at Data Centre Central
ODATA announced an investment of US$ 1,3 billion for the construction of new data center clusters in Colombia. source
