Brazilian port operator set to hire datacenter provider for multi-cloud project

Port operator Santos Brasil, one of the largest in Latin America, will choose a colocation datacenter provider as part of its multi-cloud project by the end of the month, the company’s CTIO, Ricardo Miranda (pictured), told BNamericas.

Santos Brasil is in the final stage of negotiations with a hyperscale player that is able to provide so-called Fast Connect public cloud services. Miranda did not give details of who the provider is, but said that its sites are in Santana do Parnaíba, in the metropolitan region of São Paulo.

Odata and Equinix are among the companies that have colocation datacenters in the area.

“We’re taking advantage of the cloud in all its possible aspects – IaaS, PaaS and Saas,” said Miranda, referring to infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service, respectively.

“But we want to take advantage of the best that each public cloud can provide because, depending on the application, one cloud can be better than another,” he added.

After the selection of this provider this month, the expectation is that the cloud migration will take place by the end of the year.

Santos Brasil’s sensitive information on port operations, such as the core terminal operating system (TOS), will remain stored internally and on-premise due to legal requirements that are still in force for this type of application “for now”, Miranda explained.

Overall, Santos Brasil expected to make investments of around 1.5bn reais (US$304mn) in expansions and modernizations by 2030, mostly at its Santos terminal, the company’s largest, and as part of a goal of reaching container handling capacity of 3mn TEUs/y.

This capex figure includes new, modern port machinery that has native digital features to allow remote operation, some of which are due to arrive by the end of this year.

Santos Brasil’s budget for investments for digital transformation and “pure” technology, such as systems and data, is around 60mn reais per year. Network, processing capacity, architecture and data security fall under these tech investments.

Santos Brasil operates five sea terminals, three of which are container terminals – Tecon Santos (Santos Port in São Paulo state), Tecon Vila do Conde (Barcarena port in Pará) and Tecon Imbituba (Imbituba port in Santa Catarina), as well as the TCG Imbituba general cargo terminal (Imbituba, Santa Catarina) and TEV, an exclusive vehicle-handling terminal at Santos port.

This month, the company completed the full deployment of an updated terminal operating system (TOS) at both Santos and Barcarena terminals, provided by South Korean specialist CyberLogitec. This project was previously reported by BNamericas.

CyberLogitec’s OPUS solution offers an integrated approach to quayside and yard operations in a single system without the requirement for numerous add-ons.

Santos Brasil has also completed the modernization of its SAP ERP to the latest version, S/4 Hana, based on the AWS cloud. The migration started in 2020 and the main modules were delivered in early 2021.

The TOS, ERP, CRM, warehouse management system (WMS), IT services management solution (ITSM) “tools have either already been renewed or are being renewed,” said Miranda.

A new CRM, for example, was contracted from Indian tech provider Zoho, competitor of powerhouse Salesforce. The ITSM, in turn, was commissioned from FreshService, a rival of ServiceNow.

A fresh WMS for Santos Brasil’s distribution centers is being provided by Senior Sistemas and will now be hosted in the cloud.

In terms of networks, the company recently had a software-defined networks (SDN) project approved by its board. The main SDN solution is being provided by VeloCloud, a company recently bought by VMware.

As regards security, Santos Brasil is using Palo Alto Networks’ zero-trust network asset solution.

And in customer relations, APIs developed and offered by Santos Brasil itself for clients to allow them to consult the status of containers, among other things, are being “actioned” around 900,000 times a year, according to Miranda.

DIGITAL TWIN, DRONES AND PRIVATE NETWORKS

Santos Brasil has also used digital twins to simulate volumes and machinery virtually, with more “practical” results for its usage obtained this year, according to the executive. The provider of this digital replica is Pittsburgh-based specialist Simio.

The increase in drone use is also part of the new stage of Santos Brasil’s digital transformation. Currently, the company rents two drones for port operations on both the Guarujá and Santos sides of the Tecon Santos terminal.

The equipment has been used mainly for property security and asset control, but it still requires an operator to analyze the images.

Next year, the company intends to expand drone use to operations and include autonomous capabilities for automatic image analysis via AI.

As for connectivity, Santos Brasil previously relied on outdoor Wi-Fi networks with 45 access points installed at its terminals and provided by Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Aruba wireless subsidiary.

It also tested a Cisco Wi-Fi technology, Fluid Mesh, to support large data transfers for a remote control system on its cranes.

A pilot for a private 4G network, with a possible upgrade to 5G, was carried out with Nokia and Telefônica.

The project produced very satisfactory latency and capacity results, especially in 5G connectivity, but it is considered expensive, particularly taking into account the back-office changes that such a network requires, explained the CTIO.

As a result, the port administrator plans to set up a private 5G network is now a project that will only be carried out in 2025.

Santos Brasil is also prospecting low-orbit satellite transmission to back up its connectivity, but has had to deal with “unexpected contractual difficulties” in hiring some of these services, said Miranda.

Source: Bn Americas

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