CEBU CITY—Digital services provider PLDT Inc. aims to fill up roughly half of its data-center capacity by year-end, even after beefing up its portfolio with a new P1-billion, 800-rack facility.
Eric R. Alberto, who sits as chief revenue officer at the company, said his group aims to increase the utilization of its 10 data centers to over 40 percent this year.
“Realistically, we’d like to move our current 34-percent to 35-percent utilization to over 40 percent, which we used to have before opening this facility. We’d like to reach high 40s to 50 percent,” he said in a media briefing during the opening of the second data center in Cebu.
Before opening Vitro Cebu 2, the group had a portfolio of nine data-center facilities spread across the Philippines. Combined, they are about 45 percent utilized.
Vitro Cebu 2 is equipped with a maximum of 800 racks, adding to ePLDT Inc.’s current 8,300-rack capacity.
Tuesday saw PLDT opening the new facility here, which will serve the increased data and tech needs of not just the city’s 10,000 industrial and commercial businesses, but also the whole Cebu province, which is known for shipping, furniture-making, tourism, business-process outsourcing and heavy industries.
“This new state-of-the-art facility is part of the PLDT Group’s nationwide effort to support local organizations and enterprises of all sizes—helping them store, manage and safeguard mission-critical data from cybersecurity threats and physical disasters,” Alberto said.
The new facility is built from the ground up, using the most up-to-date and globally competitive technologies, including finger-vein scanning features, special CCTV cameras and 24/7 monitoring and surveillance.
“We’ve made sure all our critical systems—uninterruptable power supplies, switch gears and transformers—are fully redundant, so collocated clients need not worry about service interruptions that could temporarily halt business operations,” ePLDT Inc. COO Nerisse Ramos said.
This infrastructure redundancy also allows the group to conduct IT maintenance without any disruption on client operations, ensuring that crucial data remains safe, all of which reside behind 11 layers of security.
The Vitro Network of Data Centers has established presence in key cities and locations across the Philippines—such as Makati, Pasig, Clark economic zone, and most recently, Davao, the first in Mindanao—to address the growing demand for colocation in the banking and finance industry, IT-BPM, content and media, retail, and public sectors, among others.
The 10 sites are interconnected via a software-defined network, making data centric services available across all facilities.
“With local economic performance expected to grow significantly in the next five years, we’ve made considerable improvements to our infrastructure and services to keep up with the demands of our customers and fully support their growth and security,” PLDT Enterprise Head Juan Victor I. Hernandez said.
The second Cebu VITRO Data Center is supported by PLDT’s robust fiber-optic network spanning over 187,000 kilometers, enabling the delivery of digital solutions nationwide.