Ottawa entrepreneur buys Canadian backup firm in third acquisition

What's the deal? Samuel Arseneau has acquired Background Backup Inc., a Canadian data protection company founded in 2010 by Sean Costello. Terms were not disclosed.

What do they do? Background Backup provides data backup and disaster recovery services to businesses and managed service providers, operating from a Tier III data centre. Costello remains involved as an adviser.

Who is the buyer? Arseneau, now based in Ottawa and originally from Hawkesbury, founded SupportMyMac from his university residence while completing a B.Com at the Telfer School of Management. Background Backup is his third acquisition.

What's the endgame? Arseneau said the goal is long-term, reliable infrastructure. Hardware upgrades and expanded storage capacity position the company for growth. "Being an entrepreneur, for me, is about building for the long term and creating reliable solutions for the organizations we serve," he said.

Not an AI play: Arseneau stressed that Background Backup is not involved in AI data centre operations, which have drawn controversy across Canada and the US over electricity use, water consumption for cooling, and noise. "We are focused on storage efficiency, reliability, and recovery performance rather than computational power," he said.

The signal: The deal underscores steady consolidation in Canada's data protection sector, where operators are drawing sharp lines between storage-focused infrastructure and the power-hungry computing behind the AI boom.

Read more: The Review

Image credit: U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command