CenturyLink announced in August that their second Toronto data center is officially open.The facility consists of 100,000 square feet of raised floor space and has a capacity for up to 5? MW of critical load.The Canada data center has also received two Tier III certifications from the Uptime Institute, one for the building’s construction and the other for design.
CenturyLink has a long history of partnership with Canadian companies, where their clients include financial services organizations and consumer brands. An increased need for access to managed hosting, secure colocation and cloud services drove the construction of the new Toronto data center. According to recent research by the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, the Toronto area is one of the top global financial centers and a growing hub for technology, two industries with great need for reliable data center services.
“CenturyLink’s Toronto data centers not only support local businesses but also the company’s growing base of international clients that require in-Canada hosting delivery,” said Mark Schrutt, director, services and enterprise applications, at global analyst firm IDC.
CenturyLink Expanding Canada Data Center Presence
?The new facility, dubbed TR3, is CentruyLink’s fourth Canada data center. With its construction, TR3 brings the company’s total Toronto data center footprint to nearly 185,000 square feet and more than 11 MW of power load. Drew Leonard, CenturyLink’s vice president of colocation production management, said that creating a second facility in the area provided customers with better disaster recovery services.
“Part of the importance of this facility is that it is far enough away from our initial Toronto facility that it fills a lot of disaster recovery requirements for customers,” said Leonard. “We’ve also built out a metro ring from Toronto 1, to the new TR3 facility, to 151 Front street.”
CenturyLink has been busy expanding its data center presence worldwide, with initial plans to add 180,000 square feet and 20? MW to its global footprint. According to Leonard, the company has between eight and 10 expansion projects going at any given time. CenturyLink operates 57 data centers around the world, including facilities in Montreal and Vancouver. The company reported positive numbers from its hosting segment this year, with operating revenues of $358 million in the second quarter of 2014, an increase of more than 3 percent from the same time last year.
