Previously completed Ellerbe Becket IDC projects for OptiGlobe include facilities in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. The firm is also designing two mission critical facilities OptiGlobe will build in Mexico and Chile by the end of 2002. OptiGlobe is building a network of large-scale IDCs to serve a wide range of outsourced Web hosting, managed services and high-bandwidth Internet connection needs. The Sao Paulo IDC can host up to 9,000 servers, enough to handle 50 percent of Internet traffic in Brazil.
The emergence of e-commerce, particularly in the past decade, has created a consistent, growing demand for expertise in developing facilities specifically designed to provide extraordinary levels of reliability and security required for data operations that run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Between 1997 and 2000, Ellerbe Becket fees for 24/7 mission critical facilities increased 10-fold. The firm expects another significant increase in 2001 mission critical business.
For OptiGlobe, Ellerbe Becket prepared Internet connectivity and system architecture design, including backbone interconnections with service providers, passive and active electronics, cable infrastructure, telecommunications and LAN/WAN design. The team also designed power and cooling distribution systems for concurrent maintenance, and plug-and-play scalability to react to changing technology and market demands.
To date, OptiGlobe has invested more than US $300 million to build IDCs in Latin America. Each center is equipped with a diverse power grid, multiple chilled-water resources, and numerous fiber optic conduit banks, guaranteed power supply, security and fire systems — a scope of mission-critical infrastructure OptiGlobe says is “modeled after the best-of-breed IDCs in the United States.” By 2005, the Company plans to invest more than US $1.5 billion in 13 data centers in Latin America.
Industry researcher International Data Corporation predicts that the demand for hosting and collocation in Latin American countries will surge to US $13.6 billion by 2010. International Data Corporation also predicts that the Latin American ISP market will experience a compound annual growth rate of 42 percent through 2004. This rate of demand and growth is similar to the Internet explosion witnessed in the United States during the 1990s.
About Ellerbe Becket Mission Critical Capabilities
The firm has been designing and building mission critical facilities for the last 25 years, with more than three-million sq.ft. (278 700 m2) and US $600 million in raised floor construction in the last five years alone. An innovator since its founding in 1909, Ellerbe Becket is a leader in architecture, engineering and the construction industry with location locations worldwide.
About OptiGlobe Communications
OptiGlobe, headquartered in Bethesda, Md., with operations throughout Latin America, is building the region’s most extensive network of world-class Internet data centers to provide businesses with new levels of performance, reliability and scalability for their mission-critical web hosting, managed services and Internet connection needs.
