Q9 Networks Opens Data Center In Greater Toronto

Colocation and data center provider Q9 Networks has opened their sixth data center ‎located in Greater Toronto. The company is planning to invest $125 million to construct ‎the data center, which is their largest investment to date.‎

With a strong demand for data center space, the company decided to construct the data ‎center in two phases comprising 2MW of critical customer capacity, instead of the ‎original single phase option. The second phase was scheduled to operate later in ‎this quarter.‎

The brand new 240,000 square foot data center is coming up near Q9’s existing Brampton ‎data centers, thus becoming the largest commercial data center campus in Canada. The ‎overall capacity is being increased in phases, with enough provisioning available on-site ‎to support almost 15MW in the same campus. Q9 has almost doubled their capacity ‎across Canada to meet their ever growing customer demand, over the last three years. ‎Simultaneously, Q9 has also acquired real estate adequate enough to triple their current ‎capacity within their existing framework. ‎

The new data center, built to suit Q9’s high standards, includes energy efficient external ‎air cooling systems, biometric security, multiple connectivity to the Internet, redundant ‎power, HVAC and related fire suppression systems. ‎The design provides access to redundant high-speed links to other Q9 data centers in the ‎GTA, thus ensuring customers total business continuity options by using two or more Q9 ‎data centers. The new Toronto-area facility is the 9th operational data center and the tenth ‎facility is coming up for inauguration in April at Kamloops in British Columbia. ‎

From 2000 onwards, investments in data center capacity have exceeded $335 million. Q9 ‎availed $210 million in April 2010 with the backing of private equity investment firm, ‎ABRY Partners.‎