Scala Data Centers, the Latin American platform for sustainable data centers in the Hyperscale market, announces the operations launch of its first site in the Brazilian Southern Region, based in Porto Alegre city.
With 4.8MW of IT, SPOAPA01 data center is part of the HyperEdge family and is configured to meet the demand for connection and distributed computing. As the result of an investment of R$ 240 million, the data center is dedicated to Hyperscale customers, who have an enormous demand of infrastructures designed for large volumes of data and processing, and that are highly scalable.
The HyperEdge SPOAPA01 data center is the first site of the Scala Data Centers in Porto Alegre, establishing a low latency communication with the South of Brazil and the Argentine market
The HyperEdge SPOAPA01 data center is the first site of the Scala Data Centers in Porto Alegre, establishing a low latency communication with the South of Brazil and the Argentine market
Designed with the highest standards of energy efficiency and sustainability, the installation materializes a Scala strategic investment in Rio Grande do Sul state and reinforces the company’s purpose in enabling the future of Latin America. SPOAPA01 data center is based in Navegantes neighborhood, close to Salgado Filho International Airport, in a region called 4th District – which is an important innovation and technology hub in the city of Rio Grande do Sul.
The site is located close to legacy data centers, in a highly connected region and near to the Malbec System, a submarine cable that, in the future, will have a branch connecting Porto Alegre to the city of Buenos Aires. This strategic position provides significant advantages for Scala customers, providing low-latency communication with the Argentine market.
The strategic choice of Porto Alegre is based not only on its proximity to legacy data centers in a highly connected region but also on the prospect of becoming a connection point for the Malbec submarine cable. This 1,550-mile cable already links São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to Buenos Aires. The planned branch aims to directly connect Porto Alegre to Buenos Aires, further solidifying the position of the city as a connectivity hub, providing low-latency communication with the Argentine market.
“We are excited about the inauguration of this new data center, which occupies a strategic position close to data centers that serve telecom operators. Despite the obsolete architecture, density and capacity compared to Hyperscale customer standards, these other sites in the region represent relevant points of connection and traffic interest. With this site now in operation, our customers finally have the alternative of a global standard data center to serve the region’s growing market, including support for the Buenos Aires region, in Argentina,” shares Marcos Peigo, CEO and Co-Founder of Scala.
HyperEdge SPOAPA01 data center is 100% powered by certified renewable energy, in line with the company’s portfolio. With high efficiency in the use of its resources, the building was designed to operate with a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of less than 1.4 and a WUE (Water Usage Effectiveness, which measures the efficiency of water use in the facilities) of zero, since it uses closed circuit and air cooling.
The construction met sustainability goals by employing the FastDeploy approach, Scala’s proprietary design and construction methodology which allows deploy in up to 50% less time when compared to the traditional model. This solution is based on prefabricated and transportable modular components, which are integrated into the buildings where the data center is located, with an optimized experience for Hyperscale customers.
The pioneering project was led by the company’s Center of Excellence in Engineering (CoE), which has more than 400 engineers, architects, and data center specialists across Latin America. Scala’s CoE works in the planning and execution of all activities related to the construction and operation of a data center, from choosing the land, through planning, design, construction, and commissioning – which speeds up delivery to customers and brings gains in scale, energy efficiency, as well as greater control and visibility of projects.
Scala currently operates nine data centers. Four of them are located at the Tamboré Campus, in Barueri (São Paulo state, Brazil), and the others are distributed across the cities of São Paulo, Campinas (São Paulo state, Brazil), São João de Meriti (Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil), Curauma (Chile), Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil) and Tepotzotlán (Mexico). Of these, the last four came into operation in 2023. The company is also in an advanced process of building new sites at the Tamboré Campus and Chile, in addition to having projects underway to implement new data centers in Jundiaà city (Brazil), Chile, Mexico and Colombia. Since its founding in 2020, Scala has invested more than R$ 8 billion in its Latin America projects and expects to reach 500MW of distributed capacity within the next five years in the four countries where it will operate.
