Inside one of the two Castle Access data centers in San Diego, Calif.

Castle Access, a San Diego, Calif.-based colocation provider has partnered with Xertix, a Mexican provider of managed services, to provide a joint portfolio of offerings - including private cloud services - using both companies' data centers.

Castle Access brings to the table its large data center footprint and experience in maintaining uptime and Xertix contributes expertise in delivering managed services.

"It was the only way a ... provider like us could compete effectively in the market," Xertix CEO Joao Tello said about the cloud computing space, dominated by giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

"We believe we can tackle the market very cost-efficiently.

" The partnership allows both companies to capitalize on economy of scale their joint infrastructure will allow and on demand in the relatively new market for cloud services without large up-front infrastructure and technology investments.

Castle Access CEO Mark Hopperton said locations of Xertix data centers in Mexico did not have much influence on the decision to partner with the provider, its service-delivery abilities being the main factor.

Tello, however, said Xertix will benefit from partnering with a company with data center space in the US by being able to offer disaster recovery and back-up locations for both American and Mexican customers.

"We think we have international customer base that would love to have services in the States as well," he said.

The two firms' services will focus on the American market.

Castle Access has two data centers in San Diego: an 88,000 square foot, 28 MW facility and a smaller, 12,000 square foot data center.

The deal is a new step for the company that has until recently been focusing on pure colocation services and targeting smaller clients.

The provider is now beginning to go after mid-size and large enterprises.

Xertix has two data centers in Mexico City, totaling 20,000 square feet, an about 7,000 square foot facility in Monterey and a small facility in Guadalajara, whose size is less than 1,000 square feet.

The company also has its own fiber network infrastructure in the country.