Late this summer, Canadian based cloud solution provider, ThinkOn Inc., announced the opening of its Global Command Centre in North Bay, Ontario. ThinkOn is projecting between 20 and 30 high-tech jobs and as many as 20 co-op student placements within the next three years. Intended to act as the company’s hub for incident response and operational management, the site will be highly secure and serve to support data centres across the United States, the Caribbean region, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.
While ThinkOn has already conducted its initial round hiring, it is still actively recruiting for professional services, security, and DevOps positions. The team plans to draw remaining staff from local talent and is seeking to fill certain roles with skilled, post-service talent from Canadian Forces. Housed at the Global Command Centre are ThinkOn’s primary cyber security operations, their centre of excellence for digital public safety, a professional services group, event and network operations, and application development.
Craig McLellan, Founder and CEO of ThinkOn says, “Our global business has been growing exponentially. To better serve our customers and protect their data, we needed to expand and create a 24/7 security and operations management centre run by an elite research and response team. We also needed a state-of-the-art location to house our new Digital Public Safety (DPS) research and design group. North Bay is a wonderful and supportive community of hard-working people and engaged academics who focus on data security and public safety. The city offers superior quality of life and excellent healthcare and recreation facilities, and beautiful vistas. We are excited to work with, and give back to, the community that we are now a part of.”
ThinkON empowers companies and government agencies to do whatever they might need to do with their data by providing a robust and highly secure suite of data management and information assets. And they’ve received many accolades along the way. Most recently they were named to Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500™, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in North America. As if that wasn’t enough, they were also added to the Technology Fast 50™ list for their rapid revenue growth, entrepreneurial spirit, and bold innovation. Prior to this, ThinkOn was also VMware’s Canadian Sovereign Cloud partner and CIOReview’s Most Promising Backup Solution Provider 2021.
The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is predicting tech sector revenue to grow by 5.3% in 2022, and by 22.4% between 2021 and 2024, meaning Canada’s technology industry is thriving. BDC also identifies that the fastest-growing segments in the software sector are software-as-a-service (SaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) companies. Since they are not bound by geographical requirements like many other industries, companies in the technology sector have the freedom and potential to generate economic growth in smaller communities.
Mayor Al McDonald had a warm welcome, “On behalf of North Bay City Council, I am pleased to officially welcome Craig and the ThinkOn team to North Bay. It is exciting to see their commitment to this project and our community. The establishment of ThinkOn’s Global Command Centre in North Bay is a great opportunity and will support the growth of our existing sector.”
Canada’s technology sector is facing a talent shortfall, despite the fact its growth is outpacing that of the Country’s overall economy. For this reason, ThinkOn is partnering with North Bay’s Canadore College to foster a meaningful connection between the industry and the talent pipeline.
“This is an exceptional opportunity for Canadore College and the community,” says George Burton, president of Canadore College. “Having a company of ThinkOn’s calibre in North Bay will help advance student learning and research. Canadore offers outstanding IT and cybersecurity education and certification opportunities. It will be inspiring for students to realize that they can pursue a meaningful career in IT without having to leave the community that they love.”
For more about ThinkOn and their partnership with Canadore College, see our previous article, “Global Security Event Operations Centre (SOC) Coming to North Bay – ThinkOn Receives FedNor Funding.”
