Software giant SAP has made a strategic investment in the Canadian city of Markham, opening its first Canadian data center to support growing demand for cloud-based software.

In its Q2 2014 results – ended June 30 – SAP announced a 39% growth in its cloud offering.

SAP said the Toronto facility will host sensitive information for the Canadian government and other public and private sector companies.

The infrastructure is currently being built into the data center and is expected to begin hosting data by the end of the year.

Computing platform SAP HANA will run from the facility alongside other cloud solutions including HR software from its company SuccessFactors.

SAP partner PHEMI, a Vancouver-based big data platform company, will use the data center for software applications based on SAP HANA.

SAP has 16 data centers worldwide and has opened three new data centers in Sydney, Tokyo and Osaka so far this year, with plans for an additional facility in Brazil later this year.

The software giant is becoming greener by running its data centers and facilities on 100% renewable energy, expected to be completed by the end of 2014.

SAP Canada’s managing director Bob Elliott said the company is seeing more Canadian companies moving their businesses into the cloud.

“Our customers range from government agencies to healthcare and financial services companies and almost all of them have strict data security requirements and need this information to reside in Canada,” Elliott said.

“Having a ‘world-class’ data center in Markham means companies here can have more flexibility to cultivate business without worrying about IT upgrades or attacks".