Enhancing The Cloud and Colocation Offering in Central America with Codisa’s Diego Cardoza

*Original article published in: https://www.cloudscene.com/blog/codisa-enhancing-cloud-and-colocation-in-central-america

Central America is becoming a hub for digital transformation, with service providers in and around the region stepping up their offerings to capture the rising demand for cloud, colocation, and connectivity.

Codisa is a Costa Rican network service provider who recently built the world’s first DCOS-5 certified data center, and developed an all-new regional cloud offering called Nube 4.0 with hardware vendor Grupo CMA.

These ventures have enhanced the way cloud and colocation is offered in Central America, so we gained insights from Codisa’s General Manager, Diego Cardoza, to find out how they’re shaping the region’s network industry.

Responding to high regional demand for cloud and colocation

Now more than ever, people and businesses across Central America are turning to digital functions to support their previously manual, or on-premise operations, which has triggered all new levels of regional demand.

“The demand for colocation and cloud services has been on the rise here for some time now, starting well before the pandemic hit in 2020,” says Diego Cardoza, General Manager, Codisa Data Center.

“But now, the virtualization of many activities, connection availability, flexibility, and scalability are more necessary than ever,” he says, “and that’s why cloud services are growing more rapidly in Central America right now, particularly in Costa Rica.”

Where there is demand, there ought to ought to be equal supply, so Codisa made it their mission to capture the cloud and colocation requirements of organizations based in their area.‍‍

Putting the customer first in strategic decision-making

In any industry, customer-oriented decisions are the ones that most often lead to success, and that’s certainly been the case for Codisa as they deployed the world-first DCOS-5 certified data center and their Nube 4.0 offering.

“By individually assessing every customer’s true infrastructure needs, we found that more than 80% of our clients were previously running in a four-times oversized infrastructure,” Cardoza says.

From this, they realized that too many local enterprises were spending far more than was necessary to access cloud and colocation services suited to their requirements.

“After adopting this people-first approach, one of our clients reported almost $1 million in cost savings in aspects such as software licensing once they moved to Nube 4.0, and they’ve now been running with us for more than five years,” Cardoza says.

Providing certified solutions that meet international standards

It is one thing to provide a service that satisfies customers’ evolving needs, but it is another to ensure the service itself is legitimate and trustworthy.

That’s why Codisa sought to construct a world-first DCOS-5 certified data center - that is, a facility that has a certified Data Center Operations Standard (DCOS) with the highest level of maturity, according to EPI.

“In 2017, Codisa was the first data center in Latin America to achieve Maturity Level 4, and two years later, we achieved Maturity Level 5 for all eleven criteria that are evaluated through a very strict audit process,” Cardoza says.

“Having this DCOS certification for our data center means that our clients can trust that our services are delivered at world-class standards, and that they are totally reliable and legitimate.”

Other certifications which Cardoza notes as important include Uptime Institute’s M&O and TCOS, ISO 9001, ISO 50001, PCI, LEED, among others.

Utilizing industry experience to drive the future of network service provision

For a market that is still coming to grips with network and digital connectivity, experience and trust go hand-in-hand when it comes to choosing the right service provider to fulfil certain requirements.

“One of the main reasons why Codisa continues to see high demand for our cloud services is because of the market’s trust in the company and in our history,” Cardoza says.

“After being the first operational Uptime-certified data center in Central America and the first local-based public cloud, Codisa was able to show these organizations how efficient it is to operate from the cloud and to let managers focus on their core business rather than worrying about facilities and infrastructure.”‍

And with this level of competition coming from one of the market leaders in Central America, the quality of network services is bound to ramp up.

‍For businesses in and around the region, this means that as the industry grows, opportunities to digitize and automate business processes will grow too.