Following the recent inauguration of its Davao-based data center facility, PLDT, through its ICT subsidiary ePLDT, continued to expand its data center facilities with the unveiling of its 9th VITRO Data Center in Clark, Pampanga.
Present at the VITRO Clark Launch are, from left: Dave Simon, Group CTO, ePLDT; Nerisse Ramos, COO, ePLDT; Eric Alberto, Chief Revenue Officer, PLDT-Smart and President & CEO, ePLDT; Jovy Hernandez, FVP & Head of Enterprise Business Group, PLDT-Smart; Nico Alcoseba, VP & Head of Disruptive Business Group, PLDT
The facility will serve the digital business solution needs of businesses in Central Luzon as well as disaster recovery requirements of enterprises located outside the region.
Eric Alberto, ePLDT Group President and CEO and PLDT Group Chief Revenue Officer, said the construction of the VITRO Clark provides enterprises with a highly robust production site that can enable and support their operations. He also said that having a facility such as VITRO data center where mission-critical data is secured, managed, and protected, this enables enterprises to focus on their core competencies in their business.
With an investment of almost P2-billion (in full capacity), Alberto further said the Clark-based facility will also benefit their customers outside Central Luzon, and Manila-based businesses can used it as a secondary site or disaster recovery facility providing them with security and connectivity in times of calamities.
The structure provides colocation, hosting, and business continuity requirements to a wide range of industries such as outsourcing and offshoring (O&O), making Clark the latest BPO hub; banking and financial services; insurance businesses, and other enterprises for which the security of vital data is of paramount importance.
Sitting on a 9,000-square meter lot, the five-storey facility boasts of 1,515 rack-capacity, the largest among VITRO data centers outside Metro Manila. It also has 2,800-square meter of space for colocation. The site is also just a few minutes away from an international airport, making it an ideal hub for foreign enterprises to colocate their back-up infrastructure.
The facility has undergone certifications to ensure international standards are met and implemented. It is situated in a seaport area with an elevation of 192-meter above sea level and 55-kilometer away from the nearest body of water, thus minimizing risks relative to flooding and tsunamis. It is also designed and built based on seismic zone 4 standards, enabling it to withstand earthquakes of magnitude 8 to 9 on the Richter scale.
Now fully operational, the VITRO Clark data center employs 11 layers of physical security equipped with vein-scanning biometric devices to ensure the highest level of uptime service level. It is also committed to a 99.99% service level availability and a highly resilient configuration from power to cooling to network connectivity which is designed to have uninterrupted operations during commercial power outage.
The data center further complements the VITRO data center network, which is already present in eight other locations including Makati, Pasig and Davao.
The data center is managed by certified data center experts, guided by ISO standards that are globally recognized as Quantity Management System (ISO 9001:2008), Business Continuity Management System (ISO 22301:2013), Information Security Management System (27001:2013); IT Services Management System (20000-1:2011), and Environmental Management System (14001:2004).
VITRO Clark is the first Rated-3 data center facility outside Metro Manila, based on the TIA-942 standards. This certification is given to data centers that are constantly maintainable in design, which means each component that is part of the distribution path can be removed, replaced or services on a planned basis without any disruption in the client’s ICT capabilities.
Meanwhile, PLDT will continue expanding their data center facilities. Alberto announced that PLDT (hopefully) will open its second data center in Cebu before the end of the year, increasing its data center count to 10.
