Canadian network and cloud-neutral data centre company eStruxture has seen rapid growth thanks to its progressive focus on factors like sustainability and diversity.

When you hear about data residing in “the cloud,” you may imagine an intangible, nebulous entity in the sky. But the cloud couldn’t be more tangible — it’s physically stored in data centres all around the world and is comprised of IT infrastructure and connectivity in the form of fibre optic networks.

With more people working remotely as a result of COVID-19, the number of internet-connected devices collecting and sharing data continues to grow, and as a result, so does the demand for data centres where this data can be stored, processed, transmitted, and communicated. The data centre industry is growing rapidly, and Canadian company eStruxture is one of the industry’s key leaders.

Infrastructure to store the world’s data

“A few years ago, less than one per cent of the world’s data sat in a data centre,” says Todd Coleman, president and CEO of eStruxture. This number is increasing rapidly – as people migrate data from personal devices to the cloud, data proliferates thanks to the increase in Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and more companies adopting emerging technologies like AI and machine learning.”

“Every three to five years, the amount of data created within the world increases by two to three times,” adds Coleman. “We need more cloud capacity, and the more cloud capacity we need, the more we need data centres.”

Enter eStruxture, a network and cloud-neutral data centre company that provides data centre infrastructure for companies needing reliable and flexible colocation services. With six facilities located in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal, eStruxture is able to support rapid growth and unpredictable change, and provides more locations, capacity, and connections than other data centres. The company was co-founded by Coleman, an industry thought leader with over 25 years of experience in the IT, data centre, and telecommunications industries.

Rapid growth thanks to progressive practices

Since its launch in early 2017, eStruxture has seen rapid growth. “We’ve got a fairly large customer base that’s growing daily,” says Coleman. “They run the gamut from the world’s largest internet and content players, all the way down to small-to-medium sized enterprises that have data needs, whether it’s a law firm or a dentist office.” In addition, the last two quarters have been the strongest performing quarters in the history of the company. This has been due to the impact that COVID-19 has had on companies’ digital transformation strategy. The growth of eStruxture has been enabled by its knowledge of the Canadian market, its ability to cater to customers’ specific needs, and its acquisitions of several competitors.

The company’s strong team is another defining aspect of its success. Historically, the technology industry has been male-dominated and lacked diversity, but eStruxture views diversity as a competitive advantage. “Diversity changes the way you think,” says Coleman. “We’re proud of the fact that 56 per cent of our employees are considered diverse, whether that’s based on gender, race, nationality, or religious background.”

Leading the way with sustainability

Adopting sustainability practices — including energy-efficient infrastructure and renewable power resources — is another important facet of eStruxture’s success.

“Data centres are massive users of power,” says Coleman. Efficiency is critical so eStruxture proudly uses 95 per cent clean hydroelectric energy to power its facilities and is focused on becoming as close to water-neutral as possible. Water is typically used to cool data centres, which generate a lot of heat. “Water consumption is the data centre industry’s dirty little secret,” says Coleman, adding that eStruxture also uses other technologies to cool its centres. A traditional data centre has a total energy expenditure for cooling alone of 50 per cent of critical IT load, sometimes higher. In contrast, eStruxture is able to achieve an annual average power saving of 70 per cent through the use of airflow management techniques, like hot and cold aisle containment, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis and air-side economizers, allowing the facility to further benefit from the outside temperatures.

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