Sierra Wireless, a maker of machine-to-machine hardware and software, has signed a services contract with IBM to host the data center dedicated to its software-as-a-service offering for its North American customer base.
Under the terms of the agreement, IBM will provide data center co-location facilities and services to Sierra Wireless at the recently built GigaCenter in Kelowna, British Columbia. The GigaCenter, a multimillion-dollar facility built in 2009 by RackForce Networks Inc., guarantees the security, scalability, and high availability required by M2M customers managing a growing number of wirelessly connected devices in the field.
Many data centers today are not capable of managing emerging applications and the growth of information being driven by the increasing number of people, places, and things being connected by the Internet every day. Smarter data centers, such as the GigaCenter, provide greater standardized control over how, where, and when data center resources are used, to provide higher levels of service and reliability, Sierra Wireless said.
The new partnership provides Sierra Wireless with a presence in North America. In 2008, the company deployed its first M2M service platform in France to service the European market.