The Telefónica group has opened its third European VDC (Virtual Data Center) telecommunications node in Terrassa. With the opening, Telefónica Tech increases the network from which it serves its customers around the world to 14 nodes: in addition to the new Terrassa node, three in Chile, two in Madrid, Brazil, the United States and Peru and others in Argentina and Colombia.
María Jesús Almazor, director of operations at Telefónica Tech for Spain and America, said in a statement that the deployment of the new node in Barcelona “expands the capabilities that until now we offered in the territory,” with a VDC-Edge node.
A data center is equipment that allows companies to store, process and distribute their information. They can be physical, in which companies install their own computer equipment, or virtual, such as those operated by Telefónica Tech, in which this company is the owner of the equipment and provides the service to the companies. According to Almazor, its virtual data center “provides companies with the reliable, secure and scalable infrastructure necessary for migration to the cloud and represents significant cost savings and the possibility of accessing it from any location.”
Spokespersons for the Spanish company explained that Telefónica Tech's new virtual data center is aimed at medium or large companies (generally with more than 50 employees) or public administrations, which will be able to directly manage their cloud service or delegate it to the operator. so that they can “integrate communications, security, hosting and housing solutions in the same data center.”
Locating the new node in Terrassa increases geographical proximity and decreases computing and processing latencies for companies that use its facilities. According to Telefónica, in addition, "the service allows companies to avoid making investments in equipment and pay only for use, allocating resources based on business needs."
According to the operator, the deployment of this new node "will facilitate the digital transformation of Catalan companies by offering them a flexible, elastic and customizable virtual platform to migrate their systems to the cloud."
Telefónica is the largest provider of cloud services powered by VMware in Spain and Latin America. Its VDC service offers companies an additional guarantee of security in the event of computer attacks. Sector sources explained that it has a self-managed service to recover the activity of businesses that have lost data or functionality as a result of a security incident (disaster recovery). Virtual servers also offer companies backup mechanisms, access protection systems through Multi-Factor Authentication and other security measures (antimalware, firewall, etc.).
Telefónica has invested 906.71 million euros in Catalonia in the last five years, especially in the deployment of the fiber optic network and the new 5G mobile telephony. Spokespersons for the group explained that in the Principality they already have 7 million accesses, and 4.7 million past real estate units (which their fiber network reaches), equivalent to 98.9% of the population.
In mobile telephony, for its part, 98.8% of the population lives in areas where connectivity is carried out with the 4G standard, and 91.4% with the 5G standard, which has already reached 399 municipalities. In total, the group employs 2,609 workers in Catalonia, 9.52% of its workforce in Spain.
