Equinix, Inc. has announced it is expanding its Rio de Janeiro data center known as RJ2. This new phase of expansion is scheduled to open in Q3 of this year and will enable Equinix to continue to meet strong customer demand for data center and interconnection services in this rapidly growing region.

"International demand is increasing since Equinix fully acquired Alog last year.  Many companies that are already customers in other regions are looking to move into the Brazil market utilizing our global platform – Platform Equinix. As a result, we are accelerating local investments in order to meet this international and regional demand. We already have 72 customers installed in the 320 cabinets of the first phase. The expansion will nearly double capacity – and we expect to keep up with this accelerated pace," said Eduardo Carvalho, managing director, Equinix Brazil.

Equinix invested $24M to open the RJ2 International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center in September 2013, and will invest an additional $17M in this new phase, increasing capacity by 310 cabinets for a total of 630 cabinets. Located in the northern area of Rio de Janeiro, RJ2 is home to the densest concentration of the country's largest network carriers and currently more than 1,500 companies are colocated in Equinix's facilities in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero.

Companies are also choosing Platform Equinix™ to support their connectivity and interconnection needs across the region. XP Investimentos, Brazil's largest retail brokerage, colocated its IT infrastructure in Equinix data centers in Rio, Sao Paulo and Tambore. Decatron, a specialist in projects, supply, implementation, IT management and optimization, has been a customer since it outsourced its IT infrastructure in 2013 when RJ2 initially opened.

Equinix provides the fastest IP traffic route from the United States to Brazil from its Miami data center, MI3, which serves as a major communications gateway to the commercial centers of Latin America. This offers a number of benefits to customers, including direct connectivity to the leading Latin American network operators for reduced latency, and close proximity for serving Latin American markets while maintaining infrastructure within the U.S. Additonally, Equinix has established relationships with all major subsea cable operators including Level 3, Telefonica, and Seaborn Networks, as well as telecommunications companies serving Brazil, to deliver a seamless stream of global data traffic in and out of the country.

RJ2 was built to leverage sustainable and green data center initiatives. Water and power consumption and carbon emissions were priority issues for the development of the project. Installed equipment uses fewer natural resources and the building has a rainwater harvesting system which has saved at least 70 percent in water consumption and 10% in power since doors initially opened.

This new phased build out of RJ2 is one of many expansions in Equinix's growing global platform of more than 100 data centers. Earlier this month Equinix announced that it is boosting interconnection capacity by opening new data centers in five major markets including London, Melbourne, New York, Singapore and Toronto.