How growing companies can scale their IT infrastructures quickly and cost-effectively

Shifting gears from start-up mode to the scale-up phase is a major challenge for any organization. You have to monitor cash flows more closely, quickly hire people who can help you grow and carefully define roles for your team members. You also need to make sure your IT infrastructure can expand with your business – no easy feat when you have to account for electricity, cooling, rack space and IT staff with the skills and knowledge to manage a more complex technology environment.

Element AI, a global developer of applied artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions based in Montreal, Canada has experienced the shift from start-up to scale-up over the past three years. In its early days, the company had one permanent IT staff member, but needed to grow quickly. The hardware Element AI uses to develop its AI-based, decision-support products is very compute intensive with high power and cooling requirements.

The company knew it needed help to scale its IT infrastructure. It didn’t make economic sense for Element AI to build its own on-premises computing arrays, so it sought a data center partner with reliable technology, an excellent network and knowledgeable staff with deep technical expertise that could accommodate the company’s small, but growing IT team.

Ultimately Element AI decided to house its IT hardware with Aptum, based on our secure and flexible colocation services and network of carrier-neutral colocation facilities around the world, including Montreal. Our IT experts worked closely with the Element AI team to ensure its equipment was installed quickly to keep up with the infrastructure and computing demands from the firm’s rapid expansion.

Element AI has grown rapidly, almost tripling in size in just three years. More importantly, the company has been able to keep up with the demand generated by its applied research scientists for access to vital computing power, supported by our technology experts.

Key to our relationship with Element AI is our service and ability to scale. Our team enjoys coming up with new solutions to our customers’ challenges. In the case of Element AI, we streamlined the installation of new equipment by allowing the company to pre-populate new server racks and ship them directly to our data center, helping the company add new capacity efficiently.

A more in-depth case study of how we helped Element AI scale-up is here.

Whether you’re a growing company looking to expand your infrastructure quickly, or an established business looking for new options, our data centers offer flexibility in design, flexible choice of connectivity and the highest levels of security. Visit here to find out more about our Aptum data center offerings.