Cogeco Data Services, will invest $100 million to open a new 100,000 square foot data facility in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in the next two years.

Tony Ciciretto, president of Cogeco Data Services, said, "Companies are using new cloud services to help expand their business, but are still being weighed down by demands on their IT infrastructure. Our new data center space and suite of managed IT services will help take the burden off our customers so they can focus on their core competencies and concentrate on growing their business."

Louis Audet, chief executive officer of Cogeco Cable Inc., the firm's parent company, said Canada was selected for the center because of its geopolitical stability. "Our company has experienced almost uninterrupted growth, whether the economic climate has been favorable or stormy. Cogeco is firmly committed to opening a new chapter in the telecommunications technology revolution. The emphasis today is on mobility and multiple platforms. This transformation in the use of technology has led to the phenomenon of cloud computing, in which Cogeco Data Services is a dominant player. Data are no longer stored on the hard drives of our computers but in immense libraries remotely accessible on a range of platforms, both wired and wireless."

"IT infrastructure is not the core competency of most companies and as technology becomes more complex, more companies will be outsourcing their data and IT management, so they can focus on their own areas of expertise," Ciciretto added. To help our customers better manage this growing challenge, we have expanded our data centre offering to help reduce our customers' capital and maintenance costs, while improving service levels." The Company is also offering a suite of managed IT solutions to help organizations deal with their increasingly complex and demanding data needs.

While hiring estimates were not released, Ciciretto said, "The new facilities will also offer state of the art 24/7/365 monitoring, power redundancy, support, biometrics, and onsite security allowing CDS to respond to the complex demands of the changing enterprise IT environment in real time. Customers will also benefit from CDS' diverse fibre network connections, greatly improving the level of network scalability and redundancy available, giving customers the room to grow, when they are ready."