In order to better serve its business customers, Rogers Communications announced yesterday that had bought a data center subsidiary from Primus Telecommunications Group for $200 million.

Rogers paid cash for Primus’ Blackiron Data and the acquisition closed yesterday. Blackiron has 4,000 customers in Canada, which it serves  out of eight data centers across five major cities: Toronto, Ottawa, London, Edmonton and Vancouver.

Blackiron’s Data’s data centers are located within 200 kilometers of 80 percent of all Canadian businesses and support the need for rapidly growing hosted and cloud-based applications.

The purchase of Blackiron enables Rogers Business Solutions’ to enhance its suite of enterprise-level data center and cloud computing services. Rogers said that Canadian businesses would also benefit from a single provider that is able to ensure end-to-end security and reliability of mission-critical business applications.

“The cloud continues to enable businesses to innovate and evolve in a dynamic market. This acquisition presents Rogers with a significant growth opportunity in the business-to-business market that aligns with our overall enterprise strategy,” said Terry Canning- SVP Rogers Business Solutions, “Blackiron brings an experienced and skilled team of professionals to advance data centre and cloud business services and we are pleased to welcome Blackiron 132 employees to the Rogers team.”

In December, Cogeco Cable bought Peer 1 Network Enterprises, which helped boost its second-quarter profits. 

Today Raco Wireless,  a provider of machine-to-machine (M2M) offerings, announced  that it had entered into a carrier agreement with Rogers Communications. The agreement will allow customers of Raco Wireless the ability to deploy M2M solutions in Canada through its Omega Management Suite platform.