Digital Realty has announced that it has opened its new YYZ12 data center in Toronto, Canada, while breaking ground on its Marseille facility.
The new facility, located at 151 Front St (Toronto's carrier hotel), is DRT's third data center in the metro and will be fully interconnected with redundant dark fiber paths to its TOR1 center in Vaughan. It will also offer 800kW and 6,900 sq ft of colocation space. This is a smart move on Digital's part. The new suite in the carrier dense facility will provide Digital's larger Toronto facilities with access to 151 Front's rich network ecosystem.
The company's fourth center in Marseille, currently under construction, is expected to offer up to 13.6MW of capacity.
Commenting on the new facilities, A. William Stein, CEO of Digital Realty, said: "Together these new capabilities in Toronto and Marseille represent a strategic milestone on Digital Realty's global roadmap for PlaformDIGITAL in North America and EMEA."
DRT's Metro Connect network in Toronto
PlatformDIGITAL® provides trusted foundation for resilient digital business as industries accelerate digital transformations globally
New highly-connected downtown data center is company's third in the emerging tech hub of Toronto
MRS4 will provide 13.6 MW of capacity and direct access to 14 submarine cables landing in MarseilleAUSTIN, Texas, /PRNewswire/ -- Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, today announced the operning of its latest North American data center in downtown Toronto, opening up 800kw and 6,900 ft² of new colocation facilities at the heart of a vibrant connected data community. The new YYZ12 data center, Digital Realty's third data center in Greater Toronto, will be fully interconnected with redundant dark fiber paths to Digital Realty's TOR1 data center in Vaughan. The new downtown location at 151 Front St represents an ideal meeting point for deploying network hubs on PlatformDIGITAL®, a first of its kind global data center platform for scaling digital business.
The company also today broke ground on its fourth center of data exchange in the strategic interconnection hub in the southern port city of Marseille in France. The new MRS4 site is expected to offer up to 13.6 megawatts (MW) of customer capacity and benefits from an exceptional geographical location in the heart of the Mediterranean, as well as direct access to 14 submarine cable systems which land in Marseille, extending the global reach of PlatformDIGITAL® with low-latency connectivity options between the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
"Together these new capabilities in Toronto and Marseille represent a strategic milestone on Digital Realty's global roadmap for PlatformDIGITAL® in North America and EMEA," said A. William Stein, CEO of Digital Realty. "Over the last 18 months since we announced our platform vision and strategy, we've introduced over 20 new data center expansion projects around the globe. As enterprises across all industries rapidly shifted to digital business models during an unprecedented year, the global number of participants in our connected data communities more than doubled to over 4,000 organizations."
Companies such as Three Point Turn Inc. recognize the value of leveraging colocation solutions from Digital Realty to support continued digital business growth. The Toronto-based software developer deployed its critical infrastructure at One Century Place, a next-generation digital hub on the site of the former Toronto Star printing press.
"As a Toronto-owned company developing custom software solutions for some of the most innovative enterprises and startups across North America, we recognize the value of deploying our critical infrastructure on PlatformDIGITAL®," said Chris Mihalicz, CEO of Three Point Turn. "Access to a consistent global data center platform with a highly connected data community is critical to help our customers overcome challenges such as data gravity and data localization as they rapidly scale their digital business."
Toronto is a more critical market than ever as businesses recognize the growing importance of the region as one of the next major technology hubs in North America. In particular the city is a major hub of data attraction for financial services, banking and the insurance industries. The Data Gravity Index DGX™ reveals that the city is in the top 10 metros in terms of growth in data gravity intensity for these sectors through 2024.
Digital Realty's new downtown data center will be fully interconnected with new Metro Connect capabilities, forming a connected campus environment for Digital Realty's customers in Toronto. Whether customers deploy network hubs in the new YYZ12 downtown facility, or data and control hubs within the large scale facility at 1 Century Place, customers can now address data gravity head on by deploying distributed network architectures that interconnect easily via a new dark fiber ring.
"As a local fiber provider in Toronto, we are excited to be able to underpin Digital Realty's new Metro Connect offering for Canadian and global customers in the city," said Dan Armstrong, CEO/CTO of Beanfield Metroconnect. "Our companies share a common vision of an open platform approach to interconnection that will help enterprises address the challenges of data gravity and scale their digital business."
Customers in Toronto can also take advantage of a direct metro connection to Service Exchange, enabling flexible access to a global connected data community of over 215 cloud on ramps, 360+ network and content providers and 2,000+ fabric participants.
Digital Realty also leverages IBM's next-generation Direct Link 2.0 capability to provide access to the IBM Cloud in Toronto, enabling customers to spend less time designing and deploying network architectures to accelerate the development of new solutions via the hybrid cloud.
