Managed hosting and cloud service provider CentriLogic has announced a new data centre in downtown Toronto, adding to its existing facilities in Ontario and New York state.
The new 16, 000 square foot data centre is located on York Street in downtown Toronto. It’s a short distance from 151 Front St., a major telecommunications hub in Canada.
“We saw a need for more data centres in the downtown core to service clients who already have offices (there)” said Robert Offley, the company’s CEO. “We already have other data centres in Canada but we’re seeing a growing demand for data centres … in the Canadian marketplace.”
CentriLogic opened its Mississauga, Ont. data centre in 2009. The new Toronto data centre has more than 7,000 strands of fiber, 24-7 security with multi-level access control and back-up generators with 40,000 gallons of stand-by diesel. The company is “vendor agnostic” and its data centre uses networking technology from Cisco Systems, VMware virtualization technology and server infrastructure from Dell and Hewlett-Packard.
The additional infrastructure will also help with growing data from CentriLogic’s customers who use its Mississauga location. “We have some of our key customers who want to do database synchronization between two data centres,” said Offley.
The planning and building process has taken about 18 months and the facility will be up and running in January 2012. “We’ve already got customers signed and committed to the space.”
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Concerns surrounding the U.S. Patriot Act have prompted some American companies to seek hosting services within Canada for their customers here, he added. “I think a lot of people see Canada as I guess a safe place to put computer infrastructure.”
He was quick to point out that the company doesn’t just offer colocation services. “We offer kind of a range of hybrid solutions,” including virtualization and cloud services and hardware applications.
“A lot of people think the cloud is going to be the silver bullet that’s going to solve every problem, but we see cloud as part of an overall solution– that may involve managed, that may involve colocation,” he said.
CentriLogic’s customer base includes the top of the midmarket and large enterprises, including some Fortune 500 companies. It also partners with software-as-a-service companies who need infrastructure hosting.
CentriLogic also has a partner program for resellers, systems integrators and software developers. This year, London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group named CentriLogic an “emerging player” in cloud infrastructure-as-a-service.
IDC Canada projects that the Canadian hosting market will grow 11 per cent in 2012. Offley said he sees the company’s business growing 50 to 60 per cent in Canada in the coming year.
