eStruxture’s Expansion Journey: The Four Lessons We’ve Learned While Building Our New CAL-2 Data Center
Sep 23, 2022
After recently celebrating our company’s five-year anniversary, it seemed like the right time to reflect on where our company started, how we’ve progressed and where we’d like to go from here.
Since eStruxture was founded in 2017, the company has grown from just one data center to 15 facilities across Canada in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto.
This includes eStruxture’s second, state-of-the-art data center facility in Calgary (CAL-2). CAL-2 will open during the fourth quarter of 2022, further demonstrating our commitment to growing our presence in Canada.
CAL-2 will be the largest, Uptime Tier III designed data center in the Calgary area, bringing true hyperscale capacity to the market with 20MW of power and 93,000 square feet of space.
It’s also the first data center we've built from inception to completion, and has been a huge milestone for our company.
Here are a few things we’ve learned from this important project and throughout our expansion journey:
- Keep a close pulse on market trends: When our President and CEO, Todd Coleman, made the decision to enter the Calgary market three years ago, it was on the belief that the economy would rebound, and that Calgary would develop into a key Canadian data center market through growth and demand from both existing and new industries. We’re now bearing the fruit of that decision.
- Industry relationships are paramount: Building relationships with industry decision-makers and thought leaders has been key to deepening our understanding of both the Calgary and Canadian markets. We recently became members of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, an important partnership that will allow us to connect with the local business community and help strengthen the local economy and create new jobs.
- Don’t lose sight of your core company values: As we continue to expand our company and look to what the future holds, one thing that will remain constant is our unwavering dedication to sustainability. It’s not only a clear advantage over our competitors, but it’s the right thing to do. Data centers are major consumers of energy as servers and other IT equipment need constant, reliable power and cooling. Our CAL-2 facility will use the same waterless, free-cooling system that’s also present in our modern MTL-2, Montreal facility.
- You’re only as good as your team: The building and launch of this new facility would not have been possible without the commitment of our best-in-class team. Their innovation, nimbleness and outstanding service are what made this new build such a success. The project was truly a collaborative team effort. The operations team worked closely with the construction and engineering teams in all phases of this project: from design reviews to construction meetings. And as a result, we were able to find efficiencies and maximize our operational readiness.
For more information on our new data center in Calgary, please visit this page.
To book a tour of CAL-2 data center, please visit this page.