Company also launches $15,000 scholarship with University of Calgary with aim of building tech talent

Global cybersecurity giant Fortinet opened a new $30-million cybersecurity hub in downtown Calgary on Wednesday.

The 70-year-old building on 2nd Street S.W. was purchased about 20 months ago, and needed extensive renovations to house their teams and prepare for future expansion, said Gordon Phillips, Fortinet’s vice-president for Western Canada.

“We’re actually building a Generation 2 data centre, so that’s really a big piece of that expense (and) obviously buying the building was another big piece of the cost,” Phillips said. “But we’re also building on the top floor around our customer experience centre with a big focus on operational technology and critical infrastructure, protection and defense is a big piece of that as well.”

It will be a space where people can come in and work on the actual physical equipment to protect critical Canadian infrastructure, he said.

Another major component of the building is a training facility on the second floor.

“That’s a big, big piece of what we’re doing is upskilling workers, making people more cybersecurity aware and offering some training for our customers as well,” he said.

Fortinet has a large campus in Burnaby and its customer support development and training institute is located in Ottawa.

In the next 18 months the company plans to double its employees from 70 to 140.

Fortinet has some very large clients based in Calgary and it is the headquarters for critical infrastructure and operational technology, he said.

Companies like Garmin in Cochrane and aerospace companies like Lufthansa help facilitate that growth in the tech space, Phillips said.

“But also, you see the energy changing in Calgary to become that tech forward place,” he said. “We’re always known as an energy hub. I think what we’re seeing from growth on the tech side is really interesting.”

The opening of this new building is an important milestone for the company, said senior vice president of international sales and service Pedro Paixao.

“It’s been 26 years that we’ve been investing in Canada, it’s been an amazing growth story and now that we have enough resources, enough business here in Calgary, it made all the sense to continue that investment,” Paixao said.

Part of their key strategy is to invest locally to try and be as close with their customers as possible and find local talent in the tech space.

“If we didn’t have a space where you can bring people, train them, have a conversation about these problems and how to solve them, it’s hard to do (that) remotely,” Paixao said. We’re going to continue to do that and grow the talent here in Canada because it’s a well-oiled machine. We already have almost 3,000 people here and like I said, we’re growing 30 per cent, so we’re going to add another 600 people.”

A $15,000 cheque was presented to the University of Calgary to help create more talent for Calgary’s tech sector.

It is a five-year commitment at $3,000 per year dedicated to a student studying data science, computer science, data engineering, and computer engineering, said digital transformation and technology vice-president and chief transformation officer Nipa Chakravarti.

As Calgary’s tech sector grows, there will be a need to strengthen the development of students to fill those spaces, she said.

“These partnerships are absolutely fundamental because our role is to not only educate, but also help the students place well into the communities, into the organizations so that they can contribute well into the future,” Chakravarti said. “So in many respects, these are exactly the types of partnerships we want.”

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