Brazil-headquartered Scala Data Centers, the leading Latin American platform of sustainable data centers in the Hyperscale market, received the environmental license to build the largest data center campus in Chile. Located in Lampa, Santiago metropolitan area, the campus will have 120MW of total capacity and foresees an initial delivery of 30MW. Scheduled to start operations in the first quarter of 2024, Scala’s new data center will be born to support a Hyperscale client.
In September 2022, the company started the construction of the first data center campus in the municipality of Curauma, Valparaíso area, with a total capacity of 45MW. The first building is expected to be completed in March 2023 and is anchored in a long-term contract with a Hyperscale client. The company has also started the executive project of its third data center in the country, in Santiago, with a total capacity of 80MW, starting with the installation of a FastDeploy building, a Scala proprietary design and construction methodology that allows data centers’s deploy in up to 50% less time when compared to the traditional model.
Scala’s three campuses in Chile will result in initial investments of around US$ 400 million and will deliver a combined capacity of over 200MW, contributing to the country’s sustainable development. All data centers will use 100% renewable and certified energy, in line with the company’s portfolio and are expected to generate around 1,000 direct and indirect jobs in the country. The Operational team recruited locally will undergo complementary technical training at the company’s Training Center in São Paulo, Brazil. In addition to technical scope, these new employees will benefit from a cultural exchange with Scala’s Brazilian team.
In addition to the two campuses in Santiago, the choice of the location of Curauma is strategic, as it is in the Valparaíso region where the submarine cable Humboldt will be launched. With about 15 thousand kilometers of fiber, Humboldt connect, for the first time, the Latin America to the Asia-Pacific region.
“The construction of a data center close to the submarine cable arrival site will guarantee unprecedented scale and quality of connectivity between Latin America, Asia and Oceania, massively contributing to enabling the region’s digital infrastructure”, explains Marcos Peigo, CEO of Scala.
“And in a scenario in which 5G accelerates the deployment of various services and applications that use high volume of data and require low latency, such as the metaverse, Internet of Things (IoT), telemedicine, autonomous cars, among others, it is something even more expressive”, adds the executive.
Scala’s projects will be led by the company’s Center of Excellence in Engineering (CoE), an unprecedented initiative in the segment. With more than 150 engineers, CoE is responsible for all activities related to the construction of a data center, from the land choice, planning, design, construction, and commissioning, which accelerates delivery to clients and brings gains in scale, control, and greater project visibility.
According to IDC, organizations’ spending on IT infrastructure in Chile will increase by 12% between 2021 and 2024, driven, among others, by the data center ecosystem. In the same period, the consultancy predicts an increase in cloud spending of around 34.6%. This scenario is due to the 5G arrival, digital transformation in the mining industry, acceleration of connectivity and advancement of the streaming market.