Data Backup Digest

As Amazon's cloud platform continues to grow in popularity, the company is constantly striving for expansion and development. To this extent, their newest data centre, which is set to be established in Montreal, Quebec, Canada by the end of 2016, will provide greater connectivity and increased support for cloud-based workloads and data storage throughout Canada.

Breaking Ground in The North

Jeff Barr, chief evangelist of Amazon Web Services, explained their plans for a Montreal-based data centre in a recent post, where he was quoted as saying: "The planned Canada-Montreal region will give AWS partners and customers the ability to run their workloads and store their data in Canada." Barr's post continued to read: "As always, we are looking forward to serving new and existing Canadian customers and to working with partners in the area. Of course, the new region will also be open to existing AWS customers who would like to process and store data in Canada."

Not only is this the first of AWS data centre in Canada, it is also the first of AWS' North American data centres outside of the United States. Once finalized, the project will give AWS coverage over a total of five regions throughout North America, including one in the eastern U.S., two separate regions in the western United States and their specialized GovCloud, which provides coverage from governmental entities across the United States. Another North American region, which is expected in 2016, will be located in the state of Ohio. Other notable locations around the world include China, India and the United Kingdom.

Embracing the Future

Amazon's new data centre is pushing the envelope in other ways, too. According to Barr, the Montreal-based data centre will be "carbon-neutral and powered almost entirely by clean, renewable hydro power." This is obviously a huge step forward for the use of renewable and clean energy, and hopefully other companies in the IT industry will take note of Amazon's strong sense of responsibility.

In fact, the city of Montreal has been actively promoting their province as a great location for data centres. The availability of renewable energy, namely hydroelectric power, as well as the cool environment are huge perks for companies who are trying to minimize their carbon footprint and cut back on their environmental impact.

The president of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, Michael Leblanc, shared the optimism of Amazon Web Services in a recent statement. He was quoted as saying: "The arrival of such a company in Montreal will have very positive impacts on innovation and generate creative projects."

All Eyes on Canada

While Amazon may be the latest cloud service provider to establish a data centre in Canada, they aren't the first. Microsoft has two separate data centres coming to Canada, one in Toronto and one in Quebec City, which should make for plenty of competition in the region. Considering the fact that Canadian companies and enterprises are projected to spend $2.5 billion on cloud computing services between 2015 and 2016, there's certainly plenty of business to compete for.