Data center services provider Cogeco Data Services, subsidiary of the major Canadian telecommunications company Cogeco Corp., brought online a new data center in Toronto’s business district, the company said earlier this week.

Tony Ciciretto, the Montreal-based company’s president, said, while the trend had been to move data centers outside the downtown core in major financial hubs like Toronto, because of high real-estate costs, there were still advantages to having a data center nearby your offices.

“But Canada's largest business district has unique needs including access to unparalleled speed and the ability to access facilities quickly for maintenance activities or in the event of an emergency,” he said.

In addition to ease of access, proximity also reduced latency, which is important for many companies, Ciciretto noted.

The new data center has two uninterruptible power supplies and two backup generators. Unlike most data centers, that have cold air blowing through a raised floor, Cogeco’s new Toronto facility uses an overhead cooling system.

Cogeco owns and operates a fiber-optic network, to which its data center customers have access. There is, however, a meet-me room at the new data center, offering access to a variety of carriers.

As a backup site, Cogeco is currently suggesting its other data center in the western part of Toronto. The company is also building a facility in Barrie (about 60 miles north of Toronto), which will also be offered as a remote-backup, business-continuity and disaster-recovery site.

Cogeco Data Services provides data center hosting, managed IT and professional services, as well as private cloud. A lot of its Toronto infrastructure used to be owned by the telecommunications division of the city’s utility Toronto Hydro, which its parent company bought in 2008.