MONTREAL – The new downtown Montreal data centre officially opened its doors Friday, billed as the only true wholesale and purpose-built data centre in the city.
The $70 million, 266,671 square-foot facility was made possible by a partnership between Urbacon and Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ. The location at 544 Rue de l'Inspecteur in the Griffintown borough, near Montreal's financial district, serves as a global telecom node and is well served by air, rail and road links.
The data centre boasts seven dedicated data floors, a total critical power of 30MW, and an annualized mechanical PUE of 1.2 or better. In addition to providing close proximity to major U.S. cities, other benefits of locating to Quebec include prime connectivity, advantageous climate and favourable hydro rates, reads the news release.
“With the completion of our new facility, Montreal now has a centralized flagship data centre similar to other major metropolitan centres like Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and Miami”, said Urbacon properties and development management VP Peter Russell, in the release. “We can now offer a world-class facility that meets the highest standards in terms of structural aspects, security, mechanical and electrical systems for a leading edge data centre.”
"By 2020, we expect the data centre sector to grow from 16% to 28%, in particular, because businesses prefer to outsource to data centres rather than incur the heavy cost of setting up such centres in their own facilities”, added Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ president and CEO Normand Bélanger.
