Cudeyo will be completed on November 22, 2011 and will be operational in the first quarter of 2012, as announced this morning by Emilio Botín, President of Banco Santander, during his visit to the complex.
The visit was also attended by Miguel Ángel Revilla, Regional President; Dolores Gorostiaga, Vice President of the Government of Cantabria; Juan José Perojo, Mayor of Medio Cudeyo; and Severiano Ballesteros, Mayor of Marina de Cudeyo. Botín expressed his gratitude for “the exceptional support we have received from all the regional and local authorities to make this project a reality, and above all, in record time.”.
Since the construction of the complex was announced in early 2009, nearly 500 jobs have been created, and once operational, it will generate around 250 permanent positions. The total investment in the project will be €240 million
of euros.
During the event, Emilio Botín stated that “the implementation of the Bank's new data center in Cantabria is, without a doubt, a great opportunity to generate benefits, progress and development for the entire Cantabrian community, and I am sure that, as President Revilla pointed out a few months ago, it will act as a magnet to attract other major projects.”.
The new data center, which will increase the Group's data storage and server space by 30%, will join four others located in Madrid, London, Querétaro (Mexico), and São Paulo (Brazil). These four corporate data centers house all the necessary infrastructure to provide services to the Group's more than 90 million customers.
The construction of the fifth data center is a strategic project for the Bank. “At Banco Santander, we understand this clearly, and for years we have invested heavily and decisively in research, technology, and innovation,” Botín stated. Thanks to this investment,
the Chairman added, “we have a cutting-edge technological platform in international banking, which allows us to achieve high commercial productivity and understand our clients' financial needs in detail and with a comprehensive vision, since
clients are at the heart of our strategy and for whom we make constant investments in innovation and operational security.”
Botín noted that Santander is the Spanish company and the bank in the European Union that invests the most in R&D, according to the ranking published last October by the European Commission of the 1,000 companies that invested the most in R&D in 2009.
The complex will be LEED certified, a distinction awarded to buildings that have demonstrated a commitment to sustainability by meeting the highest efficiency standards. The facility's energy consumption will be 35% lower than that of other similar centers considered efficient, and it will achieve annual savings of more than 24 million kilograms of carbon monoxide. "The Cantabria Data Center will be characterized by its high level of technology, respect for the environment, sustainability, and energy efficiency, which will set a global benchmark for other centers of this type," explained Botín.
The construction of the Cantabria data center “will guarantee our growth and minimize operational risk,” said Botín. Thanks to their technological capacity, these five nerve centers allow for the management of a vast amount of information: processing more than three trillion transactions annually, more than 10,000 business transactions per second, and one trillion customer communications annually. Furthermore, they store 4,500 terabytes of information and comprise 50,000 computing devices in their configuration.
