Equinix, Inc. has announced that it has closed a definitive agreement to complete the 100% acquisition of ALOG Data Centers of Brazil S.A. in an all cash transaction of $225M USD.

In April 2011, Equinix, together with Riverwood Capital, acquired a majority stake of ALOG, with Equinix holding a 53% ownership of the company. With today's announcement, Equinix has purchased the remaining 47% stake and will integrate the company into Equinix.

The completed acquisition of ALOG extends Platform Equinix™ to the Latin America market, creating a seamless experience for customers between Equinix's global footprint of 101 International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers across 32 markets. It also gives Equinix the ability to satisfy strong demand from its network, content, cloud, enterprise and financial services customers looking to establish a presence in the rapidly growing Brazilian market. According to an April 2014 report from World Bank, Brazil represents the world's seventh largest economy and the second largest IT market in emerging markets behind China. Since the original announcement in 2011, Equinix customers representing companies from several vertical industries have expanded their infrastructure into Brazil including Cloudsigma, GlobeNet, Level 3, Orange Business Services and Telefonica.

"ALOG's strong position in Brazil and complementary business model provided Equinix the opportunity to establish a presence in an important emerging market and meet growing demand for data center services in Latin America," said Karl Strohmeyer, president of the Americas for Equinix. "The ALOG team has done an outstanding job of leveraging the company's strength in Brazil – specifically in cloud and mobility – and integrating it into Equinix's global footprint to extend the world's leading data center platform into Brazil."

"The successful partnership with Equinix and ALOG's management has allowed ALOG to become the leading carrier-neutral data center provider in a high growth and large market such as Brazil," added Francisco Alvarez Demalde, founding partner of Riverwood Capital. "ALOG is ready for this next phase of growth, and we wish the company continued success with the full integration into the Equinix platform."

ALOG is among the leading carrier-neutral data center services providers in Brazil and serves approximately 1,500 customers across its four data centers in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. ALOG is the only provider to offer data center services in both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero, the largest markets in Brazil. Equinix is committed to the Latin American market and will continue to invest in this critical addition to the global Equinix platform.

In a separate announcement today Equinix announced the completion of the third phase of its second data center in Sao Paulo (SP2). This expansion was completed one month ahead of schedule due to strong demand from enterprise and cloud computing customers looking to reduce IT infrastructure costs, extend their global reach and connect with new customers and partners on Platform Equinix™.

SP2 is a Tier III-certified data center, meeting international standards that ensure the highest level of redundancy and connectivity, and is the only data center provider to offer Tier III-certified data centers in both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The $22M USD addition to SP2, located in the Sao Paulo suburb of Tambore, provides space for an additional 600 cabinets, bringing the total to 1,270.

"The occupancy rate of SP2 exceeded our expectations. The first two phases of SP2 are full and we believe this rapid growth will continue as more companies realize the cost savings of leveraging cloud-based IT solutions and discover new business opportunities by interconnecting with the 4,500 companies across Platform Equinix," said Eduardo Carvalho, president, ALOG. 

Customers in SP2 look to ALOG to improve performance and reduce IT costs. Examples of how companies have benefited from IBX deployments include:

SP2 is home to two popular online services in Brazil: Apontador, a search engine visited every day by one in five Brazilians, and Maplink, an API geo-localization platform. Both are owned by Local LBS Group, and collectively generate 40 terabytes of data per month. Since colocating with ALOG, Maplink and Apontador have reduced their IT infrastructure costs by 30% while lowering latency and ensuring a high-quality online experience for millions of users.

Highwinds, a Florida-based content delivery network, is a long-term ALOG customer that chose to collocate in SP2 to establish a redundancy point for its Latin American customers who depend on high availability for its content distribution, storage, analytics and cloud-based IP services.

"By deploying at ALOG we are reaching new customers and partners in the cloud, mobile, financial, enterprise and content industries to reduce IT costs and improve application performance. As we look to widen our global reach and our customers seek to do the same, our data center strategy is increasingly integral to realizing our long-term goals," said Marco Medugno, director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Highwinds.

Engevix, the largest engineering consulting company in Brazil, has realized a 20% reduction in IT cost through its deployment in SP2, while also increasing the availability of its services to employees in domestic offices across Brazil and to those in its international offices.

SP2 is the first data center in Brazil to use external cold air to cool the data center environment. Whenever the external temperature is lower than 62.6 degrees F, this "indirect cooling" technology pumps outside air to lower the temperature of the cooling liquid, which is used to cool the data center. Designed with sustainability in mind, SP2's water consumption will be reduced by 70% and power consumption by 10%.