Shaw eyes Canadian data centre
Calgary facility to meet ‘ pent- up demand’ from local businesses
Nearly one year after buying Denver, U. S.- based data centre provider ViaWest Inc., Shaw Communications Inc. is announcing plans to open its first Canadian data centre.
Shaw and ViaWest plan to open the 40,000- square- foot facility in Calgary this fall, even as cashstrapped oil and gas companies scour every nook and cranny for expenses they can slash.
But Shaw and ViaWest are billing the full suite of hybrid IT solutions that they plan to offer as a way for medium- sized firms to reduce their costs by outsourcing critical tasks to the experts. In fact, Ron McKenzie, senior vice- president of Shaw Business, says there is “pentup demand” from local businesses looking for much more than rack space for their servers.
During the past decade, ViaWest has grown from just five data centres in two U. S. markets to 28 centres in eight cities, including Dallas, Minneapolis and Las Vegas. Shaw is relying on that expertise to launch the new Alberta facility, which will offer a mix of on- site and cloud- based data storage.
“We have ridden through many different downturns in the U. S. economy and we’ve only seen the demand for outsourcing these types of services increase over time,” said Nancy Philips, chief executive of ViaWest, which serves more than 1,500 customers. “For many in C- suite, it’s about how do they create much higher automation and efficiency in their operation to be at a competitive advantage.”
This centre will unite ViaWest’s technical clout with Shaw’s fibre optic cable network in Alberta, leveraging assets from its acquisition of Enmax Envision Inc. in 2013.
“ViaWest brings 16 years of expertise and it has helped us get to market much quicker than if we had to do it on our own,” McKenzie said, adding Shaw has amassed over 850,000 kilometres of fibre cables that can transmit client data across Canada and the U. S.
The Calgary- based company acquired ViaWest last July for an enterprise value of US$ 1.2 billion, including debt, to accelerate growth of business services in Western Canada, where the likes of International Business Machines Corp., Telus Corp. and Rogers Communications Inc. have opened up data centres of their own. McKenzie believes the breadth and quality of the managed services Shaw plans to offer will set it a part.
Shaw has already begun selling to some corporate clients across North America and is working towards a fall launch date, Philips says. “We’re on track,” she said. “We’ve done this many times before.”