Toronto DCI Report 2019: Data Centre Colocation, Hyperscale Cloud & Interconnection

Toronto is another data centre market that is being shaped by the accelerating growth in hyperscale cloud infrastructure. And the hyperscale surge comes at a time when data privacy is becoming a chief concern, adoption of outsourcing is reaching a tipping point and various political winds are blowing in the direction of Toronto and Canada in general. All this coincides with an economy that has shifted hard towards technology, research and innovation. There could not be a better confluence of events for the Internet infrastructure market.

Amid all these tailwinds, the foundation of the Toronto market has always been there – even
if it was a bit untapped. Toronto is the financial centre of Canada and home to a very meaningful portion of the national economy. The population of large enterprises and major technology entities is unmatched elsewhere in the country. Toronto is a major transportation hub and strategically proximate to the United States.

The one big challenge for Toronto is the underlying cost of operating. The cost of power is high (over 3x times neighbouring Québec) and real estate is increasingly expensive. And this has made Montréal a strong alternative to Toronto when it comes to hyperscale and wholesale data centres. AWS and Google, for example, have chosen to deploy cloud infrastructure in Montréal and bypassed Toronto.

However, the Toronto versus Montréal dynamic is starting to shift as serving the critical mass of enterprises and end users in Toronto becomes so important that operators will simply have to give up the cost savings from operating in cheaper environments like Québec. It is why Microsoft and Oracle have set up hyperscale platforms in Toronto and more are sure to follow.

The Toronto market continues to scale. In 2019, the Toronto colocation market generated $316.2m in revenue and is projected to grow at a 5-year CAGR of 12.3%. The market remains in its early stages of development and this speaks to the overall upside. Not even three years ago, there was no hyperscale infrastructure on Canadian soil. Fast forward to 2019 and every major cloud has landed. Hyperscale will continue to be the primary driver. Its spin-off impact on wholesale infrastructure and interconnection is increasingly clear and will shape the market over this critical five-year stretch. This report is an excellent resource for any service provider, investor or enterprise end user looking to understand and project the data centre market in Toronto or find a service provider.