Mexican financial institution Grupo Financiero Banorte has partnered with Hitachi Vantara on a data center migration project.

Banorte and Hitachi Vantara migrated the company from a data center in Mexico City to a facility in Querétaro, as well as upgrading Banorte's mainframe storage environment.

According to Banorte, the migration was motivated by a desire to reduce the business risks associated with natural disasters and to "strengthen its digital foundation."

It is unclear what natural disasters this refers to. Mexico City is at risk of river floods and earthquakes, according to Swiss Re. Querétaro was impacted by floods and landslides in October 2025, with eight municipalities in the Sierra Gorda region impacted. DCD has contacted Hitachi Vantara for clarification on how the new data center is better positioned to protect against such occurrences.

Banorte was previously impacted by a data center outage in 2019. The data center was operated by Prosa, and located in Santa Fe, Mexico City.

The data center migration saw Hitachi and Banorte migrating 450 terabytes of data in less than an hour. The new environment used by Banorte is supported by two mainframes and three interconnected Hitchachi storage arrays. Banorte is also now using Hitachi Vantara Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) systems and Hitachi Universal Replicator (HUR) technologies, and has reduced its transaction response time by 50 percent.

“Our strategic goal is to turn ordinary banking services into something extraordinary. Our digital capabilities are crucial to drive this strategy, as they will allow us to deliver hyper-personalized customer experiences,” said Delfin Ruiz, chief technology infrastructure officer, Banorte. “Hitachi Vantara is constantly evolving and improving their solutions, which in turn supports the growth of our own digital capabilities. We trust Hitachi’s technology and people to deliver for Banorte for years to come.”

“We’re proud to support Banorte’s vision of delivering exceptional digital banking experiences to its customers,” added Adrian Johnson, chief revenue officer, Hitachi Vantara. “This successful migration showcases how our enterprise storage and services teams work in lockstep with customers to modernize critical infrastructure, reduce operational risk, and prepare for future innovation.”

Details about the new data center selected have not been provided. DCD has reached out to Hitachi Vantara for more information.

According to DataCenterMap, Queretaro has at least 18 data centers. Operators include KIO Networks, Ascenty, Odata, and CloudHQ.

Grupo Financiero Banorte was founded in 1899. Today, the bank operates more than 1,200 branches, around 7,300 ATMs, and 5,200 retail stores. The bank is also a known customer of Microsoft.