Tag Archives: aisle containment

Selling into Latin America

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Latin America is one of the fastest growing data center markets in the world, so the topic “Building Data Centers in Latin America” was perfect for IDG’s 21st Century Data Center Symposium held in Dallas a couple weeks ago.
Based on the conference, I have these recommendations for product latijns-amerikadelivery into the region:
  1. Set expectations based on the specifics the individual country, LatAm is not homogeneous. For example, Chile is strict on paperwork, Guatemala is more relaxed.
  2. Clarify delivery terms. Delivery Duty Paid (DDP) needs to clearly define the shipment hand-off. The difference between the “construction site” and the “staging/off site receiving area” can be weeks—and kilometers—apart.
  3. Value Added Tax (VAT) is complex, get professional help. In some cases it can be recovered, in most cases it needs to be paid in advance.
  4. Business practices vary by country, there’s a large gray area of local expeditors, prepaid contractor fees, etc. Know that going in, do the necessary research.
  5. Duties vary widely with Brazil having the steepest ones. Plan for these in your project costing and make sure duty codes for your products are correct.
brazil-startup4116-620x354Polargy has partnered with Anixter for most of our product deliveries into the LatAm region which allows us to leverage local boots on the ground to handle most of these logistical, tax, and duty issues.
We anticipate continued success in the LatAm region and look forward to sharing more insights as we gain them.

Where Is Containment on the Adoption Curve?

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Containment has been around for years, but the mainstream adoption of containment is just now happening. In terms of the Technology Adoption Curve, the market has clearly moved beyond the initial “Innovator” phase and is well into the “Early Adopter” phase, perhaps even now bordering on the “Early Majority” phase.

We have seen innovators and technology enthusiasts like NetApp, Facebook, Cadence Design Systems, and Pixar Animation deploy containment well over six years ago. Then, we have seen that second phase of visionaries looking to get ahead of their competition. This group would include Verizon, Barclays, Equinix, Digital Realty and Kaiser Permanente who all have adopted containment to some degree over the past several years.

Today, we are seeing more and more architects and engineering firms design containment into their data centers, and we are seeing more pragmatic companies start to consider containment. This is in parallel with continued pressures of rising density and power costs, the original catalysts for containment. What we can conclude is that the bulk of the containment market is still untapped and that the volume of containment work will continue to increase over the next few years as the Early and late Majorities go through their adoption.

The blue line is the distribution of adoptions, i.e. 13.5% of the companies/ people out there are “early adopters,” while 34% of the companies/people in the world are “Late Majority Adopters.”                                                                                                                                        The yellow line shows the total market penetration of the new technology (containment in this case) over time and represents the sum over time of the blue line. So, “X” is time and “Y” is market share or percent of market using the new technology.