Verizon's Terremark eyes Latin America expansion

Verizon's Terremark cloud unit on Wednesday rolled out security services in its Sao Paolo, Brazil data center in what marks a formal expansion push into Latin America.

Specifically, Verizon is launching its managed and professional security services in Brazil and Latin America. That services unit revolves around protecting corporate and government data.

The services are available today and features tools to identify threats, implement policies and test for application vulnerabilities among other efforts.

For Terremark and Verizon, Latin America offers a market that can fuel growth for years to come.

Cindy Bellefeuille, director of security and compliance product management at Verizon, said in an interview that Terremark's Sao Paolo data center features 70,000 square feet and 150,000 servers. That data center serves retailers, banks and hospitals among other verticals.

"Brazil is a large market with a lot of organizations operating there. We always serviced that market, but now are formally launching and planning to provide services on the ground," said Bellefeuille.

This Terremark strategy is dubbed local to local. In other words, local workers will deliver services in the native languages and business customs, she said. Verizon and Terremark will still serve tier one global clients from its data centers in Virginia, Germany and Australia under a follow-the-sun model, but local customers can get services on the ground.

For Terremark, Brazil is its largest Latin America hub and it has locations in Colombia as well as the Dominican Republic.