Opportunities and challenges for the data center sector in South America

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, has data centers as its backbone in terms of infrastructure. They have the capacity to meet the new demands of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Big Data and cloud computing. These technologies generate massive amounts of data, which significantly increases the demand for storage and processing, and leads to the expansion and modernization of existing data centers, which are rapidly evolving to become more efficient, secure and flexible.

In recent years, the data center sector in South America has been experiencing robust growth, the region is following the global trend, with the market gaining greater scale through the expansion of large players in the sector, the South American market appears to be on the rise, as it offers some fundamental characteristics that meet the new facilities’ technical requirements. The main objective of this study is to analyze the incipient South American data center market, more specifically the markets of Brazil, Chile and Colombia, providing analyses of colocation and hyperscale inventory, the main companies in the sector and the prices charged in each country, for example.

Considering that electricity is one of the main components used by data centers and its availability and characteristics are one of the main attractions for the sector, the study also provides an analysis of electricity production in these countries. This study also includes an analysis of the increase in demand that AI will have for the data center market and an analysis of the main strategies of governments in terms of tax incentives to attract investment in the sector.