In Colombia, the Digital Future Starts Now

At Equinix, we believe the digital potential of Latin America is practically limitless. That’s why we’ve made it our mission to help businesses—both local and multinational—get the distributed, interconnected digital infrastructure they need to be successful in the region.

I’m proud to say that we’ve been in Latin America for over a decade now, and we’ve invested about $2 billion across the region during that time. We’ve opened new Equinix IBX® data centers and supported the growth of digital ecosystems in all the leading markets in the region, including Brazil, Mexico and Chile. In short, wherever our customers needed interconnected digital infrastructure, we were there to fulfill their needs.

Now, we’re excited to announce that our latest expansion—the Equinix BG2 data center in Bogotá, Colombia— is now open. We believe Colombia is emerging as the next great destination for digital businesses looking to expand in Latin America. We also saw clear signs of demand for digital infrastructure coming from within the country: In the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 86% of Colombian IT leaders said that digitizing the business was a top priority for their organization’s technology strategy.

We invested about $45 million dollars to build the new facility, which will provide four times the capacity of our existing BG1 data center in Bogotá. In fact, BG2 will be one of the largest data centers in all of Colombia. By giving Colombian digital leaders and their global counterparts access to state-of-the-art physical and virtual infrastructure on demand, the new BG2 facility will help kick the country’s digital transformation into overdrive.

When we first announced that we were building the BG2 data center back in October 2022, we mentioned everything about Colombia that inspired us to expand our presence there. This includes its fast-growing IT sector, its dynamic and vibrant economy and its many different subsea cable connections—both within Latin America and to the U.S. via Miami. All those things are still true today. If anything, we’re even more excited about Bogotá now than we were back when we started this process, and we can’t wait to start welcoming customers to BG2.

What makes BG2 special?

Existing Equinix customers already know and love the unique value proposition that Platform Equinix® offers, including:

• Access to a global footprint of 240+ data centers across 70+ metros
• On-demand digital services that enable physical infrastructure at software speed
• The ability to tap into the largest and most diverse digital ecosystems on the planet

With the launch of the new BG2 facility, we’re simply making it easier for more businesses in Colombia to start capitalizing on these benefits. The BG2 site will even be located on the same street as our existing BG1 facility. This means that customers that are already deployed at BG1 will be able to expand their presence in the city quickly, without latency between the two sites becoming an issue.

Cloud adjacency for optimized hybrid multicloud

Leading cloud hyperscalers have also recognized the potential of Colombia’s digital economy. In July 2022, Oracle Cloud became the first major cloud provider to announce they’d be launching a cloud region in Colombia.[1] We can safely assume they won’t be the last, as the demand for cloud services in the country is undeniable. The GTTS found that 41% of Colombian IT leaders are hiring staff to work on cloud computing, making it among the most in-demand skillsets.

As businesses look to start taking advantage of growing cloud availability in Colombia, our presence in the country will help them maximize the benefits of their hybrid multicloud strategy while minimizing the drawbacks—such as high data egress fees. Many Equinix IBX data centers are home to cloud on-ramps for major cloud hyperscalers. This is true of BG1, and it will be true of BG2 going forward. This will allow businesses in Colombia to build a cloud-adjacent architecture, where they can maintain control over their data in our colocation environment while also moving it into the cloud as needed.

Interconnection for access to digital ecosystems

Customers that deploy in BG2 will have access to Equinix Fabric®, our software-defined interconnection service. This means they’ll be able to create direct, private connections from Bogotá to 50+ other metros throughout the world. Our self-service Equinix Fabric portal allows customers to deploy or alter their virtual connections in a matter of seconds, maximizing their infrastructure agility.

You can use Equinix Fabric for data center interconnection across your own distributed digital infrastructure or to tap into digital ecosystems, no matter where your chosen ecosystem partners are located. For instance:

• Equinix Fabric can help a manufacturer based in Bogotá remotely access Salesforce services located in Northern Virginia.
• Organizations working in Colombia’s thriving healthcare and pharmaceuticals sector can share their research data with ecosystem partners throughout the world, without having to move that data over the slow, unreliable public internet.
• Financial services companies in Bogotá can create direct, low-latency connections with trading partners based in other leading financial hubs, including São Paulo, Mexico City and even New York.

Powering the future of mobile networks in Colombia

The digital economy of Colombia has traditionally been heavily driven by mobile devices and apps, so it’s no wonder that 63% of Colombian IT leaders said that 5G could help solve the digital divide more quickly—by far the most common response in the GTTS.

Equinix is the ideal partner to support the growth of 5G networks in Colombia. We work with thousands of network service providers globally. This includes 30+ that are already deployed locally in Bogotá, while our BG2 expansion will put us in position to host even more. This will allow us to form direct, low-latency connections between Equinix IBX data centers at the metro edge and 5G infrastructure in far edge locations. In short, Colombia’s 5G future will be built on our platform.

Learn how Equinix is accelerating digital transformation—in Bogotá and across Latin America

The launch of BG2 is certainly an important milestone for our growth in Latin America, but that doesn’t mean we’re about to stop now. We know the digital infrastructure needs of Colombia and other Latin American countries will continue to evolve going forward, and we’ll never stop investing and innovating to help meet those changing needs.

For now, we invite you to learn more about Equinix IBX data centers in Bogotá, and how they can help you take advantage of everything this growing digital market has to offer.

[1] “Latin America home to 10 new cloud regions since onset of COVID-19 pandemic,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, November 22, 2022.