The new MT2 International Business Exchange data centre will also have energy efficiency advantages that will let temperatures be maintained at 27 Celsius, instead of the much cooler temperatures of the past.
The MT2 International Business Exchange data centre, which will open in Vaudreuil-Dorion this fall
Digital infrastructure vendor Equinix has announced it will open a second data centre in Montreal. The new MT2 International Business Exchange data centre will be located in Vaudreuil-Dorion, which is immediately south-west of the island of Montreal, and is scheduled to open in the second half of 2023.
“This marks a new facility for Equinix, our 16th data centre in Canada and our second in Montreal,” said Andrew Eppich, Managing Director at Equinix Canada. “This one expands our capacity, but it also fits in with a strategy in our business model where we build one facility in a major region and expand from there. In Montreal, there was an opportunity to be both on island and off island.” The new data centre off the island of Montreal will complement the existing facility on the island.
Eppich noted that this is a fairly common strategy, and that Equinix has used it themselves in the Greater Toronto area.
“Cloud providers have been following similar strategies,” he said. “In Toronto we have one facility downtown and one in the suburbs, in Brampton.”
Eppich said Equinix views Montreal as a rising technology centre with strong growth in interconnection bandwidth.
“We see Montreal as a rich interconnection hub with its interconnection bandwidth forecast to grow by a 46% CAGR by 2025,” Eppich said. Those numbers are from the Global Interconnections Index 2023, a report published by Equinix. “It is second only to Toronto in Canada with its interconnect.”
Montreal is also one of the fastest growing edge metros in the world, with its interconnection bandwidth forecast to grow by a 46% CAGR by 2025, according to the Global Interconnections Index 2023, a report published by Equinix.
Edge metros are those locations primarily used as the interface between the physical and digital worlds, as organizations connect to customers, edge devices and places of business and participate in local marketplaces.
“The edge is where the data is of most value and it is optimized,” Eppich said. “For Equinix it’s the optimization of the digital platform that is close to where data is being processed – close to network service providers and cloud providers, rather than only working from head office. It really speaks to this idea of a distributed architecture.”
Much of the new expected business will be local, with a large ecosystem of industries that includes gaming, aerospace and financial services. Eppich said that they also expect to see a significant amount of business from Europe using this data centre.
“We expect that the market will be both existing domestic customers that are optimizing their current efforts and the unique accretive opportunity that will come from customers from Europe,” he indicated. “They see Montreal as an easy ‘land and expand’ spot in North America.”
Eppich said that the new data centre should interest the company’s channel partners.
“Equinix is the world’s digital platform company and we create a place where all the right partners can create the right opportunity for enterprises,” he noted. “This enables them to create things they are working on in one more location
“I also think our partners in Canada and globally are interested in sustainability and green data centres,” Eppich added. “This Montreal data centre represents what we are working on in this area, with the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). It will allow temperatures in this data centre to be raised to 27 celsius, and deepens our partnerships with manufacturers, SIs and those who support us with heating and cooling.”
