Canara has named Tom Mertz as its CEO. Mertz brings more than 20 years of experience in the data center and IT industry to Canara, and he will be responsible for implementing a growth plan that taps into the industry’s need for more proactive and effective management solutions for backup power systems.

Mertz joins Canara from QTS, a publicly traded provider of data center facilities and cloud services that is one of the fastest-growing in the industry with more than 3.8 million sq ft of state-of-the-art data center space. In his executive role at QTS, he managed one of the company’s largest divisions whose growth was driven by his ability to adapt the QTS solution to meet evolving needs of Fortune 500 clients. Prior to QTS, Mertz was an executive at Lee Technologies, where he was instrumental in transforming the company’s strategy to focus on data center solutions for clients in both private and public sectors. Mertz earned his B.S. degree from Georgia State University and has participated in executive leadership programs at Emory’s Goizueta Business school and George Mason University.

“Tom has an outstanding track record of leading organizations as they adapt to evolving market trends while meeting customer needs not being served by traditional competing companies,” said Patrick Hendy, partner of Columbia Capital and member of Canara’s Board of Directors. “Tom’s vision to make Canara a leader in predictive monitoring/analytics will help companies achieve better return on investment, reduce costs and maximize uptime — and his experience and drive make him the ideal person to lead Canara.”

“Canara has what every company dreams of having: A game-changing solution that becomes indispensable. I’ve spent my entire career in and around data centers, and I know first-hand how a critical systems failure leads to crisis situations involving downtime and costly fixes. With Canara’s predictive analytics, those situations can be substantially minimized,” said Tom Mertz. “I am excited to join Canara and lead our great team of employees, partners and resellers to fulfill our growth strategy.”