By Emmie V. Abadilla Mandaue City, Cebu – PLDT, Inc. yesterday opened its second VITRO Data Center in Cebu, worth P1 billion,  its tenth in the country, to provide digital solutions to local and overseas enterprises. This newest VITRO Data Center targets to serve the increased data and ICT needs of the city’s 10,000 industrial and commercial businesses as well as the whole Cebu province known for shipping, furniture-making, tourism, business process outsourcing, and heavy industries. Mandaue City produces 75% of the country’s total furniture exports and hosts Shemberg, the world’s top carrageenan supplier. “This  state-of-the-art VITRO facility is part of the PLDT Group’s nationwide effort to support local enterprises of all sizes — helping them store, manage and safeguard mission-critical data from cybersecurity threats and physical disasters,” announced PLDT Group EVP and Chief Revenue Officer and ePLDT President and CEO Eric R. Alberto. VITRO Cebu 2 is equipped with a maximum of 800 racks, adding to ePLDT’s current 8,300-rack capacity. The new facility is built from the ground up, using the most up-to-date and globally competitive technologies, including finger-vein scanning features, special CCTV cameras, and 24/7 monitoring and surveillance. “We’ve made sure all our critical systems — uninterruptable power supplies, switch gears and transformers — are fully redundant, so co-located clients need not worry about service interruptions that could temporarily halt business operations," explained ePLDT Group’s SVP and Chief Operating Officer Nerisse Ramos. "This infrastructure redundancy also allows us to conduct IT maintenance without any disruption on client operations, ensuring that crucial data remains safe, all of which resides behind 11  layers of security," she added. The VITRO Network of Data Centers has established presence in key cities and locations across the Philippines — such as Makati, Pasig, Clark economic zone, and most recently, Davao, the first in Mindanao — to address the growing demand for co-location in the banking and finance industry, IT-BPM, content and media, retail, and public sectors.