Latvian telco Tet has formally opened its sixth data center in Riga after expanding capacity by 60 racks.

Tet announced an investment of €1.4 million ($1.6m) in its data centers in January, to include a 60-rack expansion of its Riga-based 1.4MW Dattum data center, the only Uptime Institute-certified Tier III data center in Latvia.

Latvian cloud growth

Latvia is still experiencing rapid growth in both data centers and cloud, says Tet, and the country is also a cloud exporter.

Tet exports 75 percent of its data center services to customers outside Latvia, and says it plans to grow its data center business by 15 percent per year. Meanwhile, inside the country, Gartner figures say 20 percent of Latvian businesses which don't yet use data center services are planning to start doing so.

"Over the last 10 years, ICT has become one of Latvia's top export industries, and it is undoubtedly one of the fastest-growing in Latvia. The field of data center services is also constantly evolving, as evidenced by the increase in the use of cloud services among Latvian entrepreneurs - since 2018 it has doubled - and now 45 percent of companies use cloud services," said Tet CEO Uldis Tatarčuks. "Tet's data center market share in Latvia is 30 percent, and we are the most recognizable data center service provider."

As the Latvian incumbent telecoms provider, Tet is majority-owned by the Latvian government, represented at the opening event by Minister of Economics Jānis Vitenbergs: "Latvia's exports in the first half of the year have grown by 20 percent compared to the previous year, and Tet has earned its own. I would like to thank the company for not only maintaining a stable position in the data processing market, but also successfully competing with global players such as Microsoft and Amazon," said Vitenbergs.

This support includes Latvia's embassy's abroad, including Ukraine: "In 2020, Tet's market share in the Ukrainian data center market reached eight percent. One of the reasons why Latvia has established productive and successful cooperation with Ukraine is the support from the Latvian Embassy in Ukraine," said Tatarčuks.

Juris Poikāns, Latvian ambassador to Ukraine said: Latvia's exports to Ukraine will have grown by 10 percent by the end of the year. I hope that these figures will be even higher."

Tet began its data center operations in 2000, with a 20 rack facility on Keldiša Street in Riga, and now has 400 racks in six data centers. "The demand for data deployment is growing - on average 25-30 racks are filled in Tet data centers every year. Currently, two thirds of the available capacity is used," said Tatarčuks.