Recently I was participating on a panel at the Data Center Summit in San Francisco. The panel consisted of Michael Rechtin, moderator from Baker McKenzie, with additional panelist Jason O’Connell from Infinity SDC, as well as panelists from Equinix and Structure Research. The theme of the panel was to discuss activity outside the U.S. borders. My specialty was in Latin America, specifically in Brazil.
Comparative to other regions in the world, Brazil continues to be an active market for data center construction mainly due to the large population and the emerging technology sector there. Brazil is the seventh largest economy, and the third largest emerging technology country in the world. Additionally, Brazil’s power is 77% hydro energy. While hydro energy in North America seems to be cheaper, in Brazil this is not the case. One of the other facts about hydro power is that in the event of a draught, power can be out for days, forcing data center facilities to rely on emergency generators. Also, in the larger cities such as Sao Paolo, in the event of a power outage, traffic becomes gridlocked, and diesel fuel delivery is sporadic at best.