Curaçao-based data center Blue NAP Americas is daring to dream big. It wants to grow into a digital hub for the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and far beyond. We talk to CEO Giovanni King about what the data center offers and how to realize its ambitions.
King is in the Netherlands for business, which is a good opportunity for us to get to know his company. Blue NAP Americas’ link to the Netherlands is, on the one hand, affiliated with the Dutch Data Center Association. The industry association brings together defining Dutch data centers to promote cooperation and influence policy issues.
For Blue NAP Americas, the collaboration piece, in particular, is an interesting option. After all, King sees data centers based in the mainland Netherlands running into constraints. They are experiencing tremendous growth, but to continue to facilitate that growth, additional data center space is needed. Additional construction is possible, but there are currently strict requirements for that to get a permit at all.
King calls this an opportunity for Blue NAP Americas, which for now has enough capacity to scale up. As an alternative to a long expansion process, they may choose to move out to Blue NAP Americas’ data center. This is an exciting option for cold data storage. After all, this data is not accessed frequently. As a result, fewer latency requirements are associated with this type of data, which is very important for meeting data on Dutch mainland.
Tier-IV data center
According to King, Blue NAP Americas has the right technology and safeguards to meet the requirements of the Dutch mainland. This gives the data center operator an asset to building its customer base in the Netherlands. It can demonstrate that it has a Tier-IV data center, which means that the highest level of performance is realized. Such a data center is highly redundant and can present figures close to 100% uptime. To this end, Blue NAP Americas has a 2N+1 configuration for critical resources, meaning twice the capacity needed for operations plus backup as an additional option. On that basis, King says his company can guarantee the targeted 100% uptime for all critical resources. “The computing power is there, we have storage and all the facilities needed for a Tier-IV data center,” King explains.
Some companies would find these technical capabilities more than interesting but then worry about data privacy. Can data that ends up in Curaçao meet the strict requirements we have here? King understands that reasoning, only then points out that Blue NAP Americas falls under the Kingdom of the Netherlands. That is, the data center must and will also comply with the requirements imposed by Dutch and European regulations. The GDPR must be followed, and at the end of this year, the NIS2 will also become more critical. Moreover, he notes Blue NAP Americas’ ISO 27001 certification was recently updated. This demonstrates the data center’s compliance with international standards for security.
Technically, it is also important for an international hub that the data center has a good submarine cable network. Currently, Blue NAP Americas mainly uses a cable connection that runs to other islands in the Caribbean, the state of Florida in the United States, several countries in Central America, and a number of countries in the northern part of South America. The Florida connection is especially useful for connecting to Europe and the Netherlands. From there, other cable systems supporting further connection can be claimed.
Government support
This entire Tier-IV data center now contains years of development work. The company was founded in 2016 and has been building steadily ever since. King came to the helm in November 2022. That’s when he was commissioned by the government of Curaçao to start positioning the data center as a digital hub for the Caribbean. The government was able to give this assignment because it has a stake in the data center provider. “And even because we want to be very ambitious, we have to build a bridge between Europe, South America and North America,” King explained.
The whole idea behind this from the government and Blue NAP Americas is to build out the IT sector. Eventually, they envision the world being able to turn to the island more for IT knowledge and applications. That is quite ambitious because many Dutch people are still considering tourism in combination with Curaçao. Tourism also represents the most significant part of the gross domestic product. Still, according to King, IT has the potential to grow into a solid economic pillar of the island. Moreover, for other economic activities, whether tourism or financial services, a functional IT sector is crucial.
What is still needed to build the IT sector is to retain and attract talent. King points out that Curaçao and Blue NAP Americas already have knowledge currently, but it remains crucial to continue recruiting skilled staff. In the past, for example, young people from the Caribbean who aspired to an education and career in IT moved to the Netherlands for colleges and universities. Now, they are also putting more effort into training in the region to retain qualified personnel. To this end, pathways have now been set up to train dozens of students yearly.
The international digital hub Curaçao
There is no lack of ambition at Blue NAP Americas, as we noticed during our conversation with King. He also sees the link with South America and further inland as an opportunity to grow his data center further. That’s why, late last year, Blue NAP Americas also partnered with industry peer Datasur from Suriname. Out of this came the Caribbean Datacenter Association (CDA). The goal is to get data center operators in the Caribbean to cooperate better, by exchanging knowledge and organizing events for further stimulation. Companies should ultimately have easier access to the data center, which is right for them. New members are, therefore, more than welcome.
In addition to good data centers, the CDA supports the sustainable nature of data centers. If sustainability is not considered when setting up a data center, it can considerably impact the environment. King adds that climate change is particularly evident in the Caribbean. Blue NAP Americas is pursuing a strategy that relies almost exclusively on renewable energy. In King’s view, this is the best way for a data center company to contribute to sustainability.
Our conversation with King about Blue NAP Americas makes it clear to us that a data center in Curaçao can meet the technical requirements we have here in the Netherlands. It could even be an interesting option to house the data of companies located on the mainland of the Netherlands in Curaçao. For an ambitious data center from the Caribbean, however, there are challenges related to cooperation. That is crucial to put itself on the map. Given the speed at which King closes partnerships, this seems to be in order.
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