Unicred overcomes severe weather catastrophe with zero operational impact

Building resilient infrastructure for uninterrupted financial services

Unicred, a Brazil-based cooperative financial institution specializing in the healthcare sector, migrated its digital infrastructure to Equinix’s high-performance data centers in São Paulo to enhance security, stability and performance. A colocation architecture ensured geographic redundancy, low-latency connectivity to major public clouds and specialized support that reduced operational risk. With its new technology infrastructure, Unicred also established a robust, scalable environment that’s ready for whatever the future holds. 

The drive for IT modernization 

Unicred’s core pillars are service excellence, technological innovation and sustainable growth. With the increasing digitalization of financial services along with its expanding member base, the institution set a plan in motion to modernize its IT infrastructure. Unicred’s goals were to strengthen availability of critical systems, ensure operational resilience, keep pace with growth and improve digital experience for its members. 

The cooperative’s existing IT operations, supported by two regional data centers, required extensive maintenance efforts and presented potential availability risks due to recurring instability and external factors such as severe weather. Physical distance from cloud providers also directly affected latency and the performance of critical applications. 

This meant Unicred needed a solution that would ensure operational continuity, further reduce risk and prepare its infrastructure for a hybrid and scalable model—without compromising availability during the migration of more than 300 servers. 

Boosting reliability, scalability and maintainability 

To modernize its infrastructure and overcome connectivity and availability limitations, Unicred implemented a colocation solution at Equinix data centers in São Paulo. The architecture was designed with full redundancy between the two sites, ensuring high availability and resilience even under adverse conditions. 

Adopting Equinix’s digital infrastructure also enabled access to Equinix Fabric, a Network as a Service (NaaS) offering that simplifies and strengthens integration with major public clouds. This allowed the cooperative to establish a hybrid multicloud network strategy and “enabled low-latency integration with cloud providers,” said Marcelo Lermen de Oliveira, Superintendent of IT Infrastructure and Operations, Unicred do Brasil. What’s more, it did so without any operational interruptions, achieving lower latency, improved application performance and scalability to support the growth of its operations. 

Smart Hands services also supported the project, providing 24/7 on-site technical support to ensure agility in operational interventions and immediate response to critical demands. All infrastructure was deployed in compliance with the strict security and regulatory standards required in the financial sector, including extensive testing, database synchronization and integration with telecommunications providers and strategic partners. Completed without service interruptions, the migration delivered significant gains in stability, performance and technological governance—setting up a solid foundation for Unicred’s ongoing expansion, automation and innovation. 

Shortly after the migration, the Rio Grande do Sul region experienced a historic flood that struck Unicred’s headquarters in Porto Alegre, where its data centers were originally hosted. The institution’s operations remained fully stable and uninterrupted even in the face of this disaster—proving the efficiency and resiliency of its new digital architecture and the reinforced strength of Unicred’s business continuity and high-availability strategy. 

Equinix solutions “ensured resilience even under adverse conditions without any operational interruptions,” says Lermen de Oliveira.

A foundation for ongoing innovation 

The partnership with Equinix delivered both tangible and strategic advancements for Unicred. New infrastructure ensured high availability and operational stability, eliminating bottlenecks and guaranteeing uninterrupted operations, even during extreme events. The 2024 flood that affected the institution’s headquarters in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, had no impact whatsoever on its processes. 

With two interconnected, high-performance, redundant data centers, the cooperative expanded its resilience and disaster recovery capabilities. Low-latency connectivity to major cloud providers, enabled by Equinix Fabric, boosted the performance of critical applications and improved the end-user experience. 

Unicred also achieved greater cost predictability and operational efficiency through the colocation model, reducing incidents and freeing its IT team to focus on strategic innovation initiatives. The new, future-proof infrastructure is also ready to support emerging technologies like AI and automation, strengthening Unicred’s commitment to continuous modernization and excellence in serving its members. 

Benefits

Greater availability 

99.9999%+ uptime now backs critical systems. 

Zero interruption 

Operations continued without impact during the migration and the 2024 flood. 

Modernized infrastructure 

300+ servers migrated to a fully redundant, high-performance colocation architecture. 

Lower latency 

Latency fell by 50% in multiple monitored cases. 

Operational efficiency 

24/7 on-site Smart Hands® support reduced IT operational effort. 

Regulatory peace of mind 

Compliance-ready infrastructure met financial sector regulations. 

Secure interconnection 

Unicred gained private, direct cloud connectivity via Equinix Fabric.