Data repatriation from the public cloud driving IFX Networks' growth

IFX Networks aims to capitalize on the trend of data repatriation from the public cloud with an inorganic strategy based on the acquisition of datacenters and fiber optic networks enhancing its solutions offered to the business and government sectors. 

"The focus is on the company's inorganic growth, seeking to open new markets in the region and expanding the number of assets specifically in terms of datacenters we have regionally," Jack Haime, global sales VP at IFX Networks, told BNamericas. 

The company owns 24 datacenters, with four in Costa Rica after having acquired Codisa and ADN Datacenters in 2024.

"Hyperscalers are still holding off opening local points of presence in non-major Latin American countries," Haime said. "That's a competitive advantage for us because we offer cloud computing locally." 

Haime also said there is an increasing opportunity for data repatriation. 

The complexity of deploying public cloud infrastructure, latency issues, out-of-control public cloud spending and security concerns have led to data repatriation. 

According to Haime, about 25% of the companies that have been using public cloud infrastructure decided to return to local clouds or even deploy their own on-premises infrastructure. 

IDC's global server and storage workloads survey reported that only 8-9% of companies plan full workload repatriation. Instead, most organizations repatriate specific elements of their workloads, such as production data, backup processes and computing resources.

IFX has been commercializing its cloud offering in the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina. 

In May, a new business in El Salvador will be opened. "We were legally incorporated in El Salvador a couple of years ago, and we just hired local staff to get started to open a market organically," said Haime. 

IFX has been growing inorganically through acquisitions such as the recent buyout of Gold Data in Costa Rica, strengthening its operation in Central America.

Haime expects growth to continue at a double-digit rate in Latin America. 

He anticipates few hurdles, despite the US policy changes that have created uncertainty for nearshoring-reliant countries like Costa Rica. 

"If I were an import or export [company], my answer would have been different because suddenly the tariffs that the American government could be imposing could have an impact, but since I'm offering a solution with local infrastructure, there really isn't much of an impact," he said. 

Haime said the infrastructure business has been historically agnostic to political changes, even though there are fluctuations because of economic changes.