Samuel Arseneau, originally from Hawkesbury and a graduate of École secondaire publique Le Sommet (Class of 2005), has announced the acquisition of Background Backup Inc., a Canadian data protection company founded in 2010 by Sean Costello.

Having grown up in Hawkesbury, Arseneau developed an early interest in technology and business. He later went on to study at the University of Ottawa, where he launched SupportMyMac from his student residence while completing his B.Com at the Telfer School of Management nearly 20 years ago — a business that remains active today.

Since then, he has continued to build and grow companies in the technology sector. The acquisition of Background Backup marks his third acquisition, reflecting a long-term focus on building sustainable and reliable businesses.

Background Backup has earned a strong reputation for delivering dependable data backup services to businesses and managed service providers. Following recent investments in infrastructure, including hardware upgrades and expanded storage capacity, the company is well positioned for future growth.

The transition was completed in collaboration with founder Sean Costello, who remains involved in an advisory capacity. A photo marking the transition shows the two entrepreneurs together, reflecting the continuity and shared commitment to the company’s future.

“Being an entrepreneur, for me, is about building for the long term and creating reliable solutions for the organizations we serve,” said Arseneau, who is now based in Ottawa. “It’s also about giving back and inspiring others, especially young people from our region, to pursue their ambitions.”

Today, Arseneau continues to build businesses while remaining proud of his roots in Hawkesbury.

“I was raised in Hawkesbury, and I’m proud that a company that now protects critical business data for organizations across Canada can trace its roots back to the community,” he said.

“As the company continues to grow, Hawkesbury will always be part of our story and a community I’m proud to be connected to,” Arseneau remarked.

Not related to AI data centres

Background Backup is not involved in Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centre operations. Those facilities have been causing controversy in communities across Canada and the United States in recent months due to the amount of electricity they consume, water resources they consume for equipment cooling, and the noise they create.

“Our business focuses on secure data protection, backup, and disaster recovery services for organizations. We have been operating from an existing Tier III data centre environment for many years, using infrastructure specifically designed for reliable data storage rather than the high-performance computing requirements associated with artificial intelligence workloads. While both services operate from data centres, the underlying technology, power requirements, and operational objectives are fundamentally different,” Arseneau said.

He said Background Backup’s infrastructure requirements are significantly different because their primary function is to securely store and protect customer data.

“We are focused on storage efficiency, reliability, and recovery performance rather than computational power,” Arseneau said.

Several key differences include that Background Backup’s platform is designed almost exclusively for data storage, not AI processing or large-scale computing workloads. Advances in storage technology allow Background Backup to continually increase storage density, meaning we can store significantly more data while maintaining similar power consumption levels. At Background Backup, customer data is compressed and encrypted before storage, helping to maximize efficiency and reduce resource requirements. Background Backup systems are optimized for energy-efficient operation and long-term reliability rather than running processors at consistently high utilization levels.

“In practical terms, what matters most to our customers is not how quickly we can process data, but how quickly we can restore it when a ransomware attack, hardware failure, or other disaster occurs. Our focus is on maintaining secure, highly available data that remains largely inactive until it is needed for recovery,” Arseneau explained.

Another issue Arseneau highlighted is data sovereignty.

“While much of the conversation today is focused on AI data centres and their infrastructure requirements, many Canadian businesses are increasingly concerned about where their data is stored and who has jurisdiction over it,” he said.

“At Background Backup, we help organizations keep their backup data on Canadian soil. For many businesses, that means greater confidence in privacy, compliance, and control of their information,” Arseneau explained.