Colombia. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) play a fundamental role for the country's business sector. That is why the ZFB Group makes available the only network of data centers in Colombia, which has the highest technology in design, infrastructure, reliability and with the TIER III certification granted by the Uptime Institute, of the United States, an institute recognized worldwide for the creation and administration of TIER standards and certifications for design, the construction and operational sustainability of data centers.
In its first phase and with an investment that exceeds US$20 million, the ZFB Group, through the companies Desarrolladora de Zonas Francas and Construcciones en Zonas Francas, has consolidated this important technological project with the start-up of two data centers located in the ZF Towers Services and Technology Park, in The Free Trade Zone of Bogotá.
According to Francisco Gutiérrez Farfán, General Manager of Desarrolladora de Zonas Francas, this network of data centers provides a reliable and redundant service to its customers nationally and internationally, being the network with the highest coverage in Colombia.
"This is a network of data centers that no one else has in the country. Our customers find not only a physical space of reliability, with their information available 24 hours a day, throughout the year, but they can also count on this network to optimize and balance that same information according to their needs, through DRP programs (Disaster Recovery Plan that protects the data, the critical hardware and software of the business, if a situation of natural disaster or damage caused by third parties arises) and BCP (Business Continuity Plan, which refers to a logistics plan to recover and restore critical functions, in possible situations of fire, earthquake, flood, tsunami, etc.), in such a way that a user always has several alternatives to house and protect information, gaining access to it continuously." Said Gutiérrez Farfán.
The two data centers of ZF Towers Services & Technology Park that are located in the city of Bogotá, have a white area of 1,360 m2, which provide comprehensive quality services to renowned companies such as Telefónica / Movistar, which since 2012 operates in the L38 data center, guaranteeing its customers a high level of availability for the provision of their services, due to TIER III certification from the Uptime Institute. This is confirmed by Roberto Puche Palacio, Director of Information Technologies, Telefónica.
"With the TIER III certification, all the guarantees of service provision to customers are given, from those who seek to host their own computing infrastructure, to those who require cloud-based services, where they have "Cloud" solutions, both Public and Private. TIER III guarantees the availability of information in the data center, in 99.982% during the year," said Puche.
Developer of Free Zones, of the ZFB Group, continues to bet on the communications and IT storage sector, so during 2016 and 2017 it will consolidate the most important data center network in the country with two additional projects.
"This is a sector that continues to grow significantly in Colombia and in the world, and we as a business strategy have decided to continue growing in infrastructure, meeting an important demand for the sector in the country and the region; for this reason, we are building two more data centers: one located in the Pacific Free Zone (ZFP) in Cali and another in the Tocancipá Free Zone (ZFT) "39 km from Bogotá," Gutiérrez Farfán emphasized.
To conclude, the executive ratified "This will be the largest private data center network in the country, with an available white area of 4080 m2 certified TIER III by the Uptime Institute, which is the main certifier of this type of infrastructure services that puts us at the forefront of the market in the country. We currently have the two data centers located in Zona Franca de Bogotá, with a total white area of 1,360 m2, however, we have projected two data centers in ZFP and ZFT, each with 1,360m2, increasing the data center network by 2,720 m2 of white area. "