IBM SoftLayer has announced the opening of a data center in Toronto. The facility is the first SoftLayer data center in Canada, giving Canadian customers a cloud hosting services provider with a local presence that can deliver bare metal and virtual servers, storage, and networking, all in one integrated platform.
The Toronto data center offers the full portfolio of SoftLayer’s cloud hosting services. The facility has capacity for more than 15,000 physical servers and is built exactly like other SoftLayer data centers, which are based on a POD (Performance Optimized Data Center) concept. The facility connects directly into SoftLayer’s global network via a network Point of Presence (PoP) located in Toronto.
Basing these cloud hosting services in a local facility meets in-country data residency requirements, for clients such as financial institutions, public sector organizations, and many large enterprises.
$1.2 billion investment
The new data center follows recent SoftLayer data center launches in London and Hong Kong, and is part of IBM Cloud’s broader $1.2 billion investment aimed at extending its cloud hosting services capabilities in Canada and throughout the world.
“Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America, and a vital financial and technological hub – not only for the province of Ontario but for all of Canada,” said Lance Crosby, SoftLayer’s CEO. “We have hundreds of existing Canadian customers that can now have SoftLayer services deployed closer to home, and thousands of customers that will take advantage of the facility to get closer to end users in this market.”
