British telecoms giant BT has opened a purpose-built data center near Bogota, Colombia.

The BT Naos campus offers cloud and colocation services to customers across Latin America. It is the first Colombian facility to receive Uptime Institute Tier IV certification for its fault-tolerant design.

‘Vive Digital’
According to IDC, the demand for data center services in Colombia is set to grow by more than 80 percent in the next five years.

In 2011, the Colombian government launched the ‘Vive Digital’ initiative, aiming to bring broadband connectivity to 500,000 digitally disadvantaged citizens and encourage wider adoption of cloud services.

“The main objective of the Vive Digital plan is to make the internet accessible to all to create jobs and reduce poverty. The great results we have achieved in the implementation of Vive Digital and the plan in place to improve them, require companies like BT to invest and raise Colombia’s technological and innovating profile,” commented Diego Molano Vega, minister of Information Technology and Communications of Colombia.

The Naos data center is located in the Tocancipá Free Zone near the city of Bogota. It was built with ‘green’ considerations in mind: the facility uses hybrid cooling, LED lighting and modular, scalable power systems. BT says these and other features make it one of Latin America’s most efficient server farms.

BT Naos benefits from a direct connection to the BT Nimbus center, located in the Fontibón Free Zone, which provides it with redundancy for all mission critical services. BT says since both data centers are located in Free Zones, the company and its customers will benefit from considerable tax exemptions.

BT already operates data centers in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela.