IBM, together with the Governments of Canada and Ontario and the City of Barrie, has unveiled one of the nation’s most advanced computing facilities: the IBM Canada Leadership Data Centre. The Barrie, Ontario-based center has been designed from the ground-up with the latest advancements in energy efficient data center management, business continuity, resiliency, security and disaster recovery services to help organizations efficiently manage growth while reducing costs and securely mitigating risk.
The data center represents a $90 million investment from IBM and will establish 20 skilled jobs in Barrie, as a portion of the $175 million IBM invested and 145 jobs created through the April 2012 launch of the IBM Canada Research and Development Centre network. In time, the new data center is expected to provide key infrastructure and personnel to help underpin ongoing research and development initiatives tied to this network. The IBM funding is supported through the Government of Ontario’s previous $15 million investment towards these initiatives.
“Canadian organizations are seeking more strategic ways to increase operational efficiencies and position themselves for sustainable growth,” said John Lutz, president, IBM Canada. “We continue to invest in smarter infrastructure within Canada because businesses can’t afford downtime with today’s economic pressures. This new facility provides a flexible foundation ingrained in best-practices so we can deliver essential services to help organizations and partners better manage data, reduce operating costs, improve productivity and gain competitive advantage.”
Fifty percent of Canadian organizations recently surveyed reported that providing sufficient data center space and ensuring the availability required to meet customer service demands are among their top challenges.* This is particularly important for high availability industries like financial services, government and retail. Yet, organizations typically spend about 70 percent of their IT budgets simply maintaining existing environments. In parallel, IDC estimates the amount of information managed by enterprises will grow 50 times over the next decade with the number of associated servers installed by organizations increasing by 49 percent in the next two years.**
Leading organizations are taking steps to address these issues. In an IBM survey of 300 IT leaders, the 21% of organizations who ran efficient data centers were able to spend 50% more on new projects and innovation to make their organizations more successful.
The highly efficient, modular center is uniquely designed to a set of global best-practice metrics that best demonstrate productivity and effectiveness in space, energy and data management These attributes will help organizations adapt existing processes and infrastructure or cost-effectively invest to more efficiently support business growth and mitigate the risk of costly system outages.
For example, the center will provide synchronous replication of data with another center that is within 100 kilometres. This means organizations that rely on critical 24/7 systems can locate their primary IT operations in one center and establish a data recovery center far enough away to reduce the risk of a geographic disaster impacting both sites, but close enough to ensure operational or customer data is always available.
The new facility will provide 25,000 square feet of initial capacity with the ability to grow to 100,000 square feet. IBM has designed and delivered more than 1,000 similar modular data centers for customers worldwide. Modular data center design uses small increments of standardized components to match business requirements with IT requirements and only add data center capacity when needed. Modular centers can be expanded in half the time of a traditional data center to easily accommodate growing demand. They help clients save up to 30 percent per year in energy costs compared to traditional centers.
This newest addition to IBM’s existing network of 17 data centers within Canada bolsters the company’s $75 million investment in Markham and Montreal-based data centers during 2011.
 ShareThis
Tags: Hosting & Colocation |
