OREANDA-NEWS. Equinix is breaking news about new expansion non-stop lately, but that simply reflects our ongoing commitment to meet the growing interconnection demands of our customers, wherever they are. And right now, our customers need more data center capacity in Brazil, home to the world’s 7th largest economy.

that we’re building our fifth data center in Brazil, SP3 in Sao Paulo. SP3 is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2017 and will greatly strengthen our presence in Brazil, where we also operate two other data centers in Sao Paulo and two in Rio de Janeiro.

We’re making a $76 million investment in SP3’s first phase, and there’s potential for future expansion to a total of 90,000 square feet of colocation space. SP3 will offer nearly 2,800 cabinets at full build, twice our inventory in Brazil today. About 13.3 megawatts of power will be available, and we’ll have a high-voltage substation and redundant lines to ensure greater reliability.

By providing additional capacity in Brazil, we’re continuing to play a central role in advancing the digital economy’s interconnected era. This is a time when instant, simultaneous and secure connections with partners and customers across industries and regions is increasingly necessary to compete. We keep expanding our global data center platform so we can bring customers close to end users right out to the network edge, for the superior interconnection they require.

Last month, we announced that Sao Paulo was one of four locations where we were planning new data centers. That growth, combined with our recent acquisitions of European data center provider Telecity and Japanese data center provider Bit-isle, means our global footprint will extend to nearly 150 data centers in 40 markets by the end of the year.

Equinix entered the Brazilian market five years ago when we acquired a majority stake in ALOG Data Center of Brazil S.A. In 2014, we took complete ownership of the company and its four data centers.

Today, Equinix supports more than 800 customers in Brazil, and we’re home to several diverse industry ecosystems, including networks, financial services, government and enterprise. By building SP3, we’re making room for anticipated demand for colocation space in the State of Sao Paulo to increase interconnection and tap into these growing ecosystems.

SP3 will be connected to our SP2 facility by dark fiber, giving customers instant access to the ecosystems there and a low latency route to the 1,100-plus networks and 6,300 companies on Platform Equinix™ worldwide. The new data center will also have access to Equinix Cloud Exchange™, which gives customers direct, simultaneous connectivity via virtual connections to multiple cloud services and providers (Microsoft Azure and Office 365 among them), so they can access whatever computing power they need at any given moment.

And SP3 is green by design, which means we prioritized sustainability and energy efficiency. For instance, its systems will integrate evaporative air cooling solutions and indirect free cooling, which uses outside air to cool the data center when temperatures drop.

SP3 will give our customers more options and opportunities in a market filled with them. Learn more about our Brazilian data centers.