In this second installment of industry key players, our series where we put the spotlight on individuals that have (or had) a great influence on the Montreal data center market, we will focus on Patrick David.
Patrick David’s background
David’s background is quite unique. After studying law and business administration in Montreal, he started his professional career at CDPQ as a transaction analyst. This position had him in charge of doing the due diligence audits for real estate transactions. We can assume that this experience has brought him great experience with numbers and real estate – two fundamental aspects of a data center.
Later own in 2004, David joined Newmark Knight Frank as a corporate real estate and data center advisor and broker. Although we don’t have very much information on what data center deals he has contributed to during his time at NKF, this position lead him to his first data center activity in Montreal.
Canix Colo
In 2007, Patrick David joined Canix Colo as VP. Canix was one of the first colocation companies in Montreal. The company built some of the most iconic data centers in Montreal, including 625 RL, 1250RL and the first Technoparc data center. With multiple megawatts of capacity in the early 2010s, Canix was a clear competitor to iWeb and other IT companies in Montreal.
Then, in 2011, Cologix acquired Canix, putting Patrick David in the major league of data center players.
DataReal Group
In 2012, Patrick David started a company called DataReal Group. From our understanding, this company is still serving him as a holding entity for personal business ventures.
Colo-D
In 2013, Patrick started Colo-D. The company was right on time in the data center market and aimed towards hyperscale clients. Colo-D was able to acquire clients like IBM, “The Big G“, and banks, with the help of CBRE on certain deals.
By early 2017, with two massive facilities, Colo-D was by far the largest data center provider in Montreal at the time.
In late 2018 ColoD was acquired by Cologix. Unfortunately, the transition made it so ColoD’s 150MW project in Saint-Bruno was never executed even if a purchase offer for the land was reportedly done.
Since this transaction, Patrick has been quite silent and inactive in the data center market. We can assume that a non-compete agreement was signed with Cologix, preventing him to get involved in the market. However, as his holding company remains active, we can hope to see him back in action someday.
Read our previous Industry Key Players installment about Steve Perez
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Update 2020-02-07 3:45PM: Some company names were redacted from the articles on the request of Cologix.