Equinix opens second Rio de Janiero data centre

Equinix, Inc. Says that ALOG Data Centers of Brazil S.A., a Platform Equinix™ Company, has opened a second International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) in Rio de Janeiro. Known as RJ2, the new Rio de Janeiro data center will enable Equinix to meet strong customer demand for data center services in this rapidly growing region.

RJ2 currently has capacity for 320 cabinets and with an additional $36 million invested in the next two phases of construction, will grow to 1,170 cabinets. It is the first and only Tier III-certified data center in the city, meeting Equinix’s international standards that ensure the highest level of redundancy and connectivity. Equinix’s Brazil data centers are home to the densest concentration of the country’s largest network carriers, and currently over 800 companies are colocated in Equinix’s facilities in São Paulo and Rio de Janiero.

According to a recent TeleGeography study, global traffic is being decentralized but exploding on a regional basis, particularly along the US/LatAm subsea route. While bandwidth demand on the trans-Atlantic route increased at a healthy rate of 36 percent annually between 2007 and 2012, demand for bandwidth from the US to Latin America grew 70 percent per year over the same period. Telcos have kept up with increasing bandwidth demand by laying new cables and upgrading existing systems, deploying more than 54Tbps of new capacity between 2007 and 2013.

Several upcoming major international sporting events are driving tremendous capacity needs to carry high bandwidth signals from Brazil to the rest of the world. As such, network broadcasters, ISPs and mobile operators are expected to make significant capacity investments to build out their infrastructure to meet user demand in support of these high-profile events in the local market.

In the last four years, Equinix has lined up all the major subsea cable operators including Level 3 and Telefonica, and telecommunications companies serving Brazil. Now these customers are poised to deliver a seamless stream of global data traffic in and out of the country.

In May, Equinix announced GlobeNet's expansion into its Miami data center (MI3) which opened the fastest IP traffic route from the United States to Brazil. MI3 offers a number of benefits to customers, including direct connectivity to the leading Latin American network operators for reduced latency, and close proximity for serving Latin American markets while maintaining infrastructure within the U.S.

RJ2 was designed with sustainability in mind. The equipment installed will use minimum natural resources and the building includes a state-of-the-art rain water harvesting system. With these initiatives, RJ2’s water consumption will be reduced by at least 70 percent and power consumption by 10 percent.

Decatron, a company specialized in IT design, provision, implementation, management and optimization, has already colocated in RJ2.

Equinix holds the controlling interest and sits on the board of directors of ALOG through an agreement brokered in 2011 to extend Platform Equinix to South America. With its investment in ALOG, Equinix offers colocation, interconnection and managed hosting services from its three existing Brazil-based IBX data centers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.