A new e-business hosting centre in Calgary is indicative of a growing market that will be worth $2.5 billion in just five years, according to a recent report on the Canadian Web hosting market.
IBM Canada recently announced the opening of its e-business Hosting Centre in Calgary, part of a $7.5 million infrastructure project the company is undertaking in the city over the next three years.
The general manager of e-business hosting services at IBM Canada said despite economic pressures, Web hosting is still one of the fastest growing segments in the IT services industry, and at IBM.
“It’s a hardened, class-A data centre, which means we have power coming into the building by different grids on the system and it is backed up by a diesel generator, which is backed up by racks of batteries,” he said. “We have uninterruptable power.”
According to a recent report by Forrester Research Canada, entitled Sizing Canada’s Web Hosting Market, IBM’s offering is part of a market that will reach $2.5 billion by 2006, with managed infrastructure providers expected to grab 53 per cent of the market.
More than 55 per cent of large Canadian firms plan to use Web hosting now and, in less than two years, 83 per cent of firms that currently outsource plan to buy managed Web hosting services, the report found.