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Canadian Pacific Railway and IBM Canada Ltd. recently reached a seven-year, $200 million agreement under which IBM will operate and improve the railroad’s computer infrastructure.

IBM will provide CPR a secure, cost-competitive computing infrastructure including servers, storage and emergency recovery planning. The contract enables CPR to derive benefits from IBM’s technology and business processes and applications developed at the Centre for Transportation Innovation in Boulder, Colo.

"This contract gives CPR the benefit of a strategic partner whose core competencies include building, maintaining and enhancing the computing infrastructure needed to make smart, cost-effective and customer-focused decisions," said CPR President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Ritchie in a prepared statement.

CPR plans to move its mainframe and data equipment in Calgary, Alberta, and Toronto to IBM’s facilities in those two cities. Under the agreement, about 100 CPR workers will become IBM employees.

Initially, IBM expects to develop solutions to make it easier for CPR to transport goods via rail. About 2.5 trillion bytes of data move across the Class I's information systems daily – equivalent to about 2,500 copies of the 40-volume Encyclopedia Britannica.