When Manny Vivar on April 29 learned he was the only Orlando finalist included on the Ernst & Young 2024 Entrepreneur of the Year list for the state of Florida, he couldn’t help but think about his high school days when he was discouraged from spending time on his computer.
“My mom and I joke because she used to hide my computer, telling me it was a waste of time,” said Vivar.
Now, he’s a world-class entrepreneur and CEO of Orlando-based HostDime Global Corp., recognized for purpose-driven work putting data centers in underserved places.
“People talk about the cloud without realizing these data centers are where the cloud is,” he said. “And there are a lot of places that don’t have a data center to house all the computing equipment and servers needed to give an area access to innovation and opportunities to further innovate.”
Having built data centers in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, Vivar turned his attention to his own back yard when in 2016 he learned how many Florida businesses rely on Atlanta-area data centers. The further a user is from a server, the slower the computing.
“That’s when I decided to build the Eatonville data center, and originally, we intended to have it finished by 2020, but the pandemic did slow it down,” he said.
The new HostDime data center is on West Kennedy Boulevard and is designated tier IV, meaning it has the most complex and robust infrastructure possible and can serve major corporations.
Inside HostDime
The new data center is now on the cusp of opening, so it’s the perfect time for Orlando Business Journal to ask Vivar some questions:
How do you feel about the Ernst & Young recognition?
I’m excited about it, but what I’m really focused on is the impact the new data center is going to deliver. I feel like people don’t quite know what it is and maybe don’t realize the innovation it will support locally. The servers, storage systems, networking infrastructure and hardware accelerators handle massive data processing, which allows for innovation of technologies like AI and block chain — at scale. Without data centers, that’s not happening.
Do people in the area know what you’re doing?
Not really. I started my company in 2003 and we’ve just been doing what we do, because we believe in it and not for any other reason. We’ve been 100% self-funded from the beginning, which is rare because building data centers is expensive. But we’ve been making money and using our own money to grow. One of the reasons we’re self-funded is we want to dictate where we’re putting our data centers, and that’s going to be based on a community’s lack of access. We don’t want an investor influencing where the data centers go. They’ll see an underserved market as risky.
Why do you focus on underserved markets when you’re deciding where to put a data center?
I was born in Mexico. I came here illegally when I was 3 years old. My family paid a coyote to get us across the border so I could have better opportunities and education. The only reason I’m a citizen today is because in 1987, Ronald Reagan legalized the status of children whose parents were in the process of becoming legal residents. By bringing data center infrastructure to places like Mexico, people don’t have to leave home to have these opportunities my parents wanted for me. Plus, data centers create jobs. Having these facilities effectively gives everybody an equal playing field versus 15 years ago, when 90% of the data centers in the world were in the United States.
It sounds like you want to educate people about data centers.
In the new data center, we’ll have a hands-on STEM lab. We’re developing a curriculum with area schools so we can bring students and adults so they can learn how the cloud actually works. We hope it will motivate somebody to create the next new technology, the next frontier. That’s exciting because we’ll feel like we played a small role.
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