CLOUD CHANGING THE WAY THAT LATIN CONNECTS AMERICA

n the five largest regions of Latin America – Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Columbia – the population is around 640 million people. To put this into perspective, there are around 330 million people in total living in the United States.

The amount of people using data in South America is growing at a compound rate of almost 25% per year. Furthermore, coupled with the fact that the average income in the region is growing, the proportion of regional industries that are pivoting to tech is rising along with it. In fact, in Mexico, nearly two thirds of its GDP is specific to hightechnology products.

In terms of personal users of data, then, the South American smartphone penetration rate is currently set at around 68% and growing rapidly.

“For example, 10 years ago, an average LATAM household family of four would download about seven gigabytes of data per month. But today, that same family is downloading 77 gigabytes of data. In fact, that number doubled to 77 from 38 in just the last three years,” explains Michael Ortiz, the CEO and Co-Founder of Layer 9.

Despite this, there are 223 million Latin residents who still lack access to the internet.

When you take these figures into account, it’s apparent that there is a major opportunity present in the LATAM market – one that, from Layer 9’s perspective, has such exceptional potential that's gone largely unnoticed.

Until now, that is.

The untapped potential of the LATAM data market Layer 9 is a data centre provider that specialises in prefabricated, modular and hyperscale solutions. It operates in the LATAM market, bringing hyperscale connectivity to regions

MICHAEL

Ortiz

TITLE: CEO & CO-FOUNDER

COMPANY: LAYER 9

INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES

LOCATION: INDIANA, UNITED STATES that have previously been dramatically underserved by these technologies.

Michael Ortiz brings 24+ years of experience in investment banking, capital markets, commercial real-estate development and information technology.

Serving industry leaders such as DuPont Fabros Technology and Digital Realty in leadership capacities, within the fields of asset management, site selection and government incentives programmes, Ortiz has a proven track record of driving teams to success.

Ortiz has also served in senior leader portfolio management roles at Equity Office Properties, and held roles in JP Morgan and Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group.

Ortiz earned his MBA from Indiana University Kelley School of Business and completed his Executive Post Graduate work in Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oxford – Said Business School.

Joseph Ryan, Layer 9’s Chief Development Officer and Co-Founder, explains how the LATAM market presents a number of growth challenges, and how the differences between expanding in America versus expanding in the LATAM market have meant that previous companies have decided not to invest in this region.

“The way in which we build in the US and other areas is that you build the site, and they will come. You’ll be able to get all the utilities and the fibre there, in some capacity, and within a certain reasonable timeframe.

“But what we found in Mexico and Latin America is that there are a lot more challenges, because some of these cities aren't as developed infrastructure-wise, or have challenges in distributing power or connectivity,” Ryan explained.

“Hyperscale was practically nonexistent within Latin America just five years ago,” Alejandro Cantu Sepulveda, the Chief Operations Officer and Co-Founder of Layer 9, added, explaining the status of the market when Layer 9 first established itself in the region.

“Working the Latin America market, and being of Mexican descent, gave me a street-

2019 Year founded 17+ Number of employees 25% The amount of people using data in South America is growing at a compound rate of almost 25% per year level perspective of what was happening within that market. And there were certainly data centre projects happening, but the scale of those projects was very, very small –varying from five to ten megawatt sites – and understanding why that was happening was a big challenge for Michael and I.”

“We saw the opportunity to solve that hyper-scaled infrastructure dilemma within Mexico, and to cater to cloud service providers who innately prefer to not always own the brick and mortar. But data centre companies in Mexico and Latin America who catered to retail clients didn't understand the hyperscale world. So, in their business plans, you saw growth of, again, three megawatts, four megawatt data centres,” Sepulveda explained.

So, in contrast to the other operators in this market, Layer 9 enables hyperscalers to continue their growth into Mexico and LATAM while maintaining the type of footprint and delivery that they've been accustomed to elsewhere in the world.

Giving something back to the LATAM market

Then, alongside the growth opportunity that Layer 9 unlocks for its hyperscale clients, there is also the company’s work to foster the region’s immense tech sector talent.

For Sepulveda, in particular, the company’s decision to invest in Mexico and the LATAM enabled him to help transform the region's reputation in the global digital and data centre industries.

“I think it's time to give back to Mexico what Mexico has given to us,” Sepulveda states.

“Mexico has great potential in Latin America, and it hasn’t been exploited properly. Technical job creation, stable investment technology, upgrading school programmes to be able to attract new talent in our trades to do things better – that creates an ecosystem of people and talent that’s sustainable and will replicate by itself.

“I tend to see it as a domino effect. The main question is, who's going to push that first domino? And we will do that. We want to create that ecosystem that creates that domino effect,” Sepulveda explains.