Latin America
Battle for the South Virginia Toledo Editor LATAM
Argentina wants to win business from Chile, say Virginia Toledo, Sebastian Moss and Peter Judge
Argentina’s pitch Cool climate Crackdown on corruption Argentina’s Investment and International Trade Agency (AAICI) New data protection legislation Lowered import taxes on servers Dark fiber available near Buenos Aires
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rowing demand for data processing has come to Latin America just as it has to the rest of the world, and countries are competing to become the local hub for colocation and cloud infrastructure. South of the Tropic of Capricorn, in the region known as the Southern Cone, Chile has been far ahead of its rivals, Argentina and Uruguay, attracting numerous data centers, including cloud facilities for Google and IBM. But two years ago, President Mauricio Macri took charge in Argentina, with the intention of attracting data center projects along with other sources of foreign investment - and his first targets include Amazon Web Services.
After AWS expressed an interest in launching a data center in Chile, Macri met with Elaine Feeney - Amazon’s VP for global infrastructure expansion - in New York in November last year. Amazon also visited Argentina to assess the market for cloud services and the local tax regime. But Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet traveled to Amazon’s headquarters in June. AWS then signed a memorandum
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of understanding with the government of Chile “to modernize government services within the country,” and a government spokesperson went on record to say AWS is interested in placing a facility in Patagonia on the southern tip of the continent. As well as getting close to customers in this part of the continent, AWS is interested in the cool climate which makes data centers more efficient, and also in Chile’s economic and political stability. The country hopes to have a new 20,000 kilometer submarine cable linking Patagonia and China, a $550$650 million project that would be the first direct cable from Asia to Latin America. As for Argentina, Macri can point to the country’s efforts to end years of financial and political unrest, with a crackdown on corruption that has won business in the financial and petrochemical sectors. One year ago, Argentina’s new Investment and International Trade Agency (AAICI) kicked off a campaign to promote the southern region of the province of Buenos Aires as a hub for data centers. The project is coordinated by Andrés Tahta, EVP for renewable energy, telecommunications and tourism at the AAICI.