Canadian Tire Corp. opens cloud-computing center and digital hub

Toronto -- Canadian Tire Corp. announced that it will open the 'Canadian Tire Cloud Computing Centre' in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the fall of 2013. The 28,000-sq.-ft. site will house a digital content warehouse, application lab, testing lab and high performance data centre. It will serve as the core digital hub for the Canadian Tire Family of Companies.



The new facility will provide the company - which includes Canadian Tire Retail, Mark's, Sport Chek, Sports Experts, National Sports, Atmosphere, Partsource, Gas+ and Financial Services - with 20-times more computing power and 10-times more network bandwidth than its existing technology infrastructure. The Canadian Tire Cloud Computing Centre will be used to host the company's new 'App Factory,' where advanced digital solutions will be developed.



"The Centre is a foundational piece to the digital work we're implementing across the Family of Companies,” said Eugene Roman, chief technology officer, Canadian Tire Corporation. “As retail evolves into e-tail, the centre will accelerate this revolution. The applications we are developing will power improvements to back-end operations as well as enhance the customers' in-store shopping experience and turbo-charge their interaction with our brands online."