Due to growing client demands in Canada, SAP SE subsidiary SAP Canada recently announced plans to open its first Canada data center. The facility represents a strategic investment for the company as it seeks to provide resources for the rise in customer requirements in the country.
The Toronto data center will be situated in Markham, Ontario and will provide infrastructure hosting specifically for government agencies as well as other organizations in the public and private sectors. Currently, the company is on track to install a number of SAP cloud solutions, allowing the infrastructure to be complete by the end of 2014.
The Ontario data center addition is part of a larger, overall growth strategy for SAP, which also plans to boost its global service footprint with 16 new facilities. The new data centers will be strategically constructed in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North America, China and Australia. However, the organization noted that the Canada data center is an important part of this process due to the increase in customer needs in the region.
“We’re seeing more and more Canadian companies moving their business into the cloud as they continue to adopt innovative technology as part of their growth strategy,” said SAP Canada managing director Bob Elliott. “Having a world-class data center in Markham means companies here can have more flexibility to cultivate business without worrying about IT upgrades or attacks.”
According to IDC Canada, the Canadian business sector spent a total of $1.6 billion so far this year on cloud services, with $1.49 billion going toward software and $131 million being spent on infrastructure and data center services. This amount is forecasted to increase by more than 200 percent in the near future, reaching $3 billion by 2018.
A focus on healthcare security
The new Toronto data center services were especially designed to appeal to organizations that have strong security requirements for their cloud information and big data. Dr. Paul Terry, PHEMI president and CEO, noted that this includes healthcare providers that deal with sensitive data like patient details, lab results or health-related images.
“We are bringing the performance of big data to healthcare organizations,” Terry said. “And we do it with the critical privacy and governance features that both the patient and the provider demand. OUr customers in both healthcare and the private sector have strong privacy and security requirements, so we’re pleased to use SAP’s secure Canada- based data center to meet these needs.”
