Industry Spotlight – Sean Maskell on GPUaaS and AI at Cologix Canada

With the rise of AI as a driving force throughout the data center infrastructure sector, we are starting to see effects beyond just space and power.  The ecosystem is evolving, and new, unique opportunities are arising.  With us today to talk about the changes is Sean Maskell, President and General Manager for Cologix Canada.  Cologix Canada operates facilities across the markets of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

TR: What is your background, and how did you get involved with Cologix?

SM: I’ve been fortunate to have spent almost 30 years in this fantastic industry learning from some of the best while in and around telecommunication switch rooms, the original data centers of that time. In the early 2000s a group of those same folks took a chance on me, asked if I would join them on a data center journey and be part of their team moving forward. Over the next 10 years with Telehouse Canada, which operated data centers in Vancouver and Toronto, the business quickly grew to one of the leading carrier neutral data centers in Canada.  Then in 2011, I was introduced to Grant Van Rooyen, who was launching the Cologix business at the time, and acquired our business in 2012. Grant and his team asked me to stay on as the Cologix Canadian president to assist in expanding the company’s Canadian footprint. Hard to believe that it’s been 12 years now with Cologix; it’s been a rewarding journey to say the least.

TR: What does Cologix Canada look like today relative to the assets you first started with?

SM: It has grown and evolved, but I would say that the foundation of our business remains the same: carrier-neutral colocation and interconnection remain at its root. Cologix operates 40+ data centers across 12 North American markets. Those 12 North American markets sit on prime interconnection locations such as 151 Front Street in Toronto, 1250 René-Lévesque in Montreal, and 555 West Hastings in Vancouver. But while we’ve been continuing to expand in our key markets, we have also been adding strategic spokes off those interconnection carrier hotel hubs to facilitate our Scalelogix business which targets large-scale, high density, hyperscale deals as well as our digital edge business.

TR: Are you seeing industry investments in AI drive demand for your Scalelogix business?

SM: Yes, but I think that investment is just a natural progression of where the industry is heading. I wake up every day excited to play a part in charting the course for Cologix Canada. Such moments of change need investments of our own to continue to grow and stay one step ahead of where our clients are heading. Our Scalelogix brand is home to the large multi-megawatt deals and high-density racks that we are seeing from AI, and our business has been very well funded to add facilities to support that rising demand.

TR: You recently announced a partnership with Consensus Core for GPU-as-a-Service capabilities, how does that fit into your plans?

SM: GPU as a service provides the ability for organizations to spin up resources without capital investment or the need to create strategic teams to deploy those footprints within a data center. It allows enterprises the ability to remain extremely nimble and flexible as they add AI functionality. It is a true crawl, walk, run approach to delivering an AI solution that can allow them to turn out business results earlier in the process. Enterprises can add AI functionality today, whether it is chatbots, certain seats, or maybe compute power, and be adjacent to those deployments within our facilities. Consensus Core deploys the NVIDIA resources within our data center, while we provide the floor space, power, cooling, interconnection, and support.

As we add GPU as a service providers within our facilities, it also grows our ecosystem of clients who want proximity to that product. It’s similar to cloud on-ramps, which we successfully added across our Canadian markets.  When hyperscalers deployed those products with us, the enterprises also followed looking for cloud adjacency. We’re now seeing those same enterprises that want to be AI adjacent, which will not only reduce their latency, but also should be able to reduce costs and increase security.

TR: How has the rise of AI affected your own operations?

SM: It is changing how we do things. A multi-tenant data center environment is always somewhat challenging.  You may have hyperscalers in one area of that facility, and you may have a smaller enterprise in another. But going forward we will need to continue to build scalable facilities. The power consumption of these new generation servers just blows my mind. When I first got into this industry and visited a 1MW or 2MW data center, I was just awestruck. Now one can go into a 50MW data center with just a handful of clients consuming all of that. Cologix is adapting to growing power demands through flexible power solutions. We’re also deploying cooling solutions that can still provide traditional cooling densities, but also address liquid cooling or direct liquid-to-chip cooling needs that are quickly becoming the new normal for AI workloads.

TR: Has Cologix deployed liquid cooling solutions today?

SM: Yes, we are deploying liquid cooling solutions right now in our Columbus campus, and we are going to continue to keep adding that functionality within our new builds as they come online.  We haven’t seen meaningful deployments of liquid cooling yet in Canada. We’re still pushing and stretching the limits of air cooling.  But moving forward, it will be table stakes to deploy direct liquid cooling as well within our new facilities here too.

TR: Are there also changes coming at the carrier hotel level?

SM: I don’t think we’re going to see much change at the carrier hotel level. That said, these future deployments are still going to need low-latency solutions to connect to carrier hotels transferring the data that they’re either consuming or producing.

TR: What new technologies will you be focusing on to meet demand from AI and other next generation trends?

SM: I think increased power consumption per rack seems like that’s the closest thing for us today. We need to continue to build our strategy to cool and deliver power to those solutions. But I think what’s next is also how they connect to users who need to consume this information. I think GPU-as-a-Service provides valuable insight into what’s next.  With the evolution and proliferation of cloud solutions, the cloud needed to move closer to the edge for the users consuming the applications being offered and the information being produced. I think AI is going to follow a similar path. It’s going to need to be in edge data centers. It’s going to need to be offered closer to the eyeballs that need to view and consume those applications and information.

TR: As you invest in the future, do you find it easier to retrofit existing facilities or build greenfield projects?

SM: I think there are certain instances where we can retrofit and add those solutions. But to get to any size and scale we need to continue to keep expanding by adding AI-ready facilities, such as what we’re doing in the US in Columbus, and such as we’re doing in Montréal with our MTL10 facility as well as our MTL8 data center that will open in the first half of 2025.  With a planned 205,000 square feet and 21 megawatts of power, MTL8 represents one of Cologix’s greenest and most sustainably designed data centers to date. As a LEED Gold registered facility by the U.S. Green Building Council, MTL8 will consume minimal energy, water and natural resources to reduce its overall impact on the environment. The facility’s cooling system is designed for maximum energy efficiency to optimize functionality while reducing the energy required to operate the facility. MTL8 also will use renewable energy power from Hyrdo-Québec.

We have plans for expansion within Vancouver as well.

TR: Are there other markets you’d like to be in where you see opportunities?

SM: There are numerous markets and opportunities that look interesting. But they have to be the right opportunities for our business. They have to be able to check the boxes of what we’re looking for from interconnection to power to location, etc. We are choosy about the markets that we want to be in, but I would say there’s none that are off-limits.  I think our existing markets have proven that they are great places to be. Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver are the three major metros in Canada, and those are going to continue to grow.

TR: What other aspects of your business are you investing in?

SM: Investing in growth is a key priority. We are investing in our people, making sure that we have the right teams in place to be able to service our clients.  That is one thing I could say we’ve done a fantastic job as a company by surrounding ourselves with the right people who have a customer-first mindset.

Regarding data center investments, at the end of October this year Cologix announced securing $1.5 billion USD in capital through a combination of debt and equity financing to fuel our next phase of strategic growth.

This infusion of capital will accelerate our expansion of AI-ready data centers across key North American markets, enabling the company to meet its growing customer demand for high-density, low-latency infrastructure. We plan to use the capital to support the ongoing build out of large-scale campuses in our core markets, including Ashburn, Columbus and Montréal, as well as begin new builds on recently acquired land in Columbus, Des Moines and Vancouver, which upon full build out can support over 650 critical megawatts of sellable capacity.

Cologix will of course continue investing in ESG. 

TR: What types of ESG product or projects have you been investing in?

SM: We’ve invested $32M since 2016 in ESG-related capex, and I think we’ll continue to look for projects with ESG impact on local, regional, and national levels. Regarding sustainability, Cologix, as a company, is 68% carbon-free. We have 22 data centers in Canada; each site is at least 85% carbon-free. Collectively, Canadian sites are 98% carbon-free. Currently, more than 60% of Cologix’s eligible sites are Energy Star certified. We’re in the process of gaining Energy Star and LEED-sustainability certifications on additional facilities in 2024 and the coming year. Sustainability has always been a top priority for Cologix. We’ll continue investing toward our aspirations to achieve carbon neutrality, using renewable energy and contributing to a more sustainable future.  Future sustainability investments on our roadmap will include how we’re delivering our power solutions, into more effective cooling solutions that reduce our carbon footprint, into design and build projects, replacing fluorescent lights with LED. It’s really all-encompassing.

TR: Thank you for talking with Telecom Ramblings!

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Categories: Artificial Intelligence · Datacenter · Industry Spotlight