Q9 To Support Alberta's Foothills School Division With Disaster Recovery Solution

2013 southern Alberta floods demonstrated need for high-availability data centre

CALGARY, July 21, 2014 /CNW/ - Q9 Networks is pleased to announce it has been selected by Alberta's Foothills School Division (FSD) to provide a high-availability disaster recovery solution for the division's web-based communications platform, including its web site and social media feeds.

FSD serves approximately 8,000 students in 19 public schools, three open campus locations and three Hutterite Colony schools and employs more than 800 teachers and support staff. It also operates its own fleet of 80 school buses, which transport more than half of the student population on a daily basis.

When catastrophic floods struck Calgary and the surrounding area on June 20, 2013, FSD was hit hard. Three schools in High River were damaged and its division office and maintenance buildings in the same community were out of commission for several months. All of FSD's servers, including its web servers, were compromised. Communication was critical so the next day the district IT team established a temporary Google site. By the third day, the main district web site was back online and experienced heavy traffic for the remainder of the crisis period as parents and students sought updates on school closures, report cards and other end-of-year details.

"The level of web traffic we received once we were able to fully re-establish our site demonstrated the importance of being able to communicate with our stakeholder community during a crisis," says James Aitchison, Director of Learning Technologies, Foothills School Division. "It also underscored the value of outsourcing our disaster recovery infrastructure to a commercial data centre provider.

"We researched several providers and selected Q9 based on a number of factors, including strong recommendations from Calgary's business community, particularly our contacts in the oil and gas sector, Q9's 100 per cent uptime guarantee and its redundant power systems and network connectivity. We also appreciate the fact that the Q9 data centre, where our infrastructure is located, is outside the downtown Calgary core in an area that is not susceptible to flooding."

"While no one can predict Mother Nature, we are pleased to be providing FSD with the peace of mind that they will be well-prepared for future events," says Richard Roskey, Vice President, Sales, Western Region, Q9 Networks. "We have been proudly serving the data centre needs of Albertans since 2002. Today, with five data centres at three sites in the Calgary area, we continue to be the best choice for public and private sector organizations seeking to establish the most resilient IT and communications infrastructure possible."

Q9 designs, builds and operates its data centres to meet the most demanding IT infrastructure requirements, including the increased power and cooling demands of today's high density computing devices. Customer equipment and data centre environmental parameters are monitored 7x24 by Q9's Control Centre, staffed by experts versed in all aspects of IT and facilities management.

About Q9 Networks:

Q9 Networks Inc. is Canada's leading provider of outsourced data centre infrastructure for organizations with mission-critical IT operations. Q9's national footprint of 14 high-availability data centres spans three provinces, including Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario and serves customers in both the public and private sectors. Q9 is owned by an investor group comprising Canada's largest communication company, BCE Inc., and some of the largest and most experienced North American pension and private equity funds, including: Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Providence Equity Partners and Madison Dearborn Partners LLC.

SOURCE: Q9 Networks Inc.

Kevin Spikes, Director of Marketing & Corporate Communications, Q9 Networks Inc., Toronto: 416-848-3311, Toll Free: 1-888-696-2266, [email protected]; Deborah Spence, Communications & Events Manager, Foothills School Division, Direct: 403-422-0915, [email protected]