Equinix: Boca Raton Serves as Bandwidth Bridge to Brazil

Citing booming bandwidth demand for Brazil and Latin America, colocation provider Equinix will build a new International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Boca Raton, Florida. The new  MI3 facility will provide an initial 31,300 square feet of data center space to support strong demand for Equinix services in the greater Miami metropolitan area and is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2012.

The Miami area has the sixth-highest Internet capacity globally and serves as a strategic hub for domestic and international routes. Boca Raton is home to several major fiber-optic cable landing stations and MI3 is on the lowest latency route to Brazil, which will allow Equinix to serve high-bandwidth events such as the upcoming 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil.

Equinix recently entered the South American market with an investment in ALOG, providing Equinix with three Brazil-based IBX data centers to offer managed hosting and colocation services for customers looking to expand in the region.

Key Gateway to South America

"As the seventh-largest economy in the world, Brazil is primed for strong economic and infrastructure growth, making it an attractive country for multi-national investment and expansion," said Charles Meyers, president of the Americas for Equinix. "The new MI3 data center in Boca Raton is a strategic addition to Platform Equinix offering a gateway to Latin America, which will allow us to better meet the growing demands of our customers in this important market."

tw telecom will expand its Equinix footprint into MI3 to support growing customer demand for its carrier Ethernet services, and to reach a rich ecosystem of cloud service providers and enterprise customers operating in Equinix data centers.

"The potential to do additional business in South America via MI3 is an exciting opportunity, as that region is a current hotbed for growth," said Tom Marx, president of National Sales, Wholesale Services for tw telecom. "Platform Equinix brings connectivity options, particularly for next-generation cloud services, for our enterprise customers in a wide range of industries, including healthcare, government, financial services, retail, technology and education. We are now in 22 Equinix data centers around the world and Platform Equinix continues to help drive our business by quickly bringing new service offerings to our 27,000 customers or even connecting with new customers through the Equinix Marketplace."

Equinix said the new Boca Raton data center will also offer important geographic diversity. While only 44 miles from Miami, Boca Raton is located outside of the evacuation zone for up to category 5 hurricanes making it ideal for business continuity requirements.