Recently, Microsoft announced the opening of new data centres in Quebec City and Toronto to assist with the expansion of its Azure cloud platform and Office 365 for its enterprise and public sector customers. Although some businesses are hesitant to integrate cloud computing and storage into their daily functions, the Microsoft Cloud and Azure offer security and protection for their critical data.
But why is now the time for this expansion, and what can be done to help more Canadian businesses and private sector organizations embrace the cloud? To find out, MD2 spoke to Jean Cheng, Solutions Executive, Public Sector Cloud Programs for Microsoft Canada.
MD2: Why is Microsoft making an effort to make its cloud services available in Canada?
Cheng: Microsoft has a long track record of making significant investments in Canada’s digital infrastructure and potential as a world leader in innovation. The Toronto and Quebec City data centres are the latest investments in helping Canadian customers transform their businesses and achieve more with technology.
MD2: Why is now the time for this announcement?
JC: Of all the current trends driving this latest industrial revolution, cloud is the enabler and platform driving technological, sociological and economic transformation. Our customers were clear about what they needed from a provider, scalability, enterprise grade and of course, highly secure cloud services. They also told us that they need cloud solutions offering data residency in Canada. For some customers this was necessary for legal and regulatory requirements; for others, it was about peace of mind.
Research from the Boston Consulting Group shows that businesses that invest in cloud technology have a competitive advantage over those that do not. We launched local data centres so that every Canadian customer – including those with strict data residency requirements, such as government and agencies – would have access to these benefits.
MD2: What benefits do Microsoft’s cloud services offer for Canadian businesses?
JC: Azure and Office 365 customers in Canada get the benefits of Microsoft’s enterprise-grade reliability and performance combined with in-country data residency. This includes greater service resiliency and business continuity resulting from multiple cloud DCs in Canada and key enterprise capabilities such as private connection to the Microsoft cloud with Azure ExpressRoute.
In addition, the new Canada zone, cloud services comply with our industry-leading portfolio of security and privacy certifications, in addition to providing the same levels of transparency of operations that have defined the Microsoft trusted cloud globally.
MD2: There are some businesses and public sector organizations that are hesitant to adopt cloud computing. What is being done to help get them on board?
JC: Enterprise customers have been hesitant to adopt cloud technology for several reasons, most of which are normal, since cloud computing represents a fundamental change not just for IT, but for the organization as whole. Some of those concerns include:
Fears around loss of control
The move to cloud computing means handing over control of important IT capabilities to a third party service provider. Some business and IT Leaders are initially cautious about this type of delegation of responsibility. These misconceptions normally fade away after a more in-depth engagement or visit to a Microsoft global data centre, where customers get to experience the scale of cloud services and the extent of our security investments first-hand.
Security concerns
Unfortunately, security concerns around cloud are a misconception. What’s lost in many of the high profile media stories around security breaches is that the vast majority have occurred in privately managed, on-premises IT environments, and are often times the result of careless or deliberately malicious insider actions. Hyper-scale cloud environments are actually more secure than the majority of on-premises IT operations despite the fact they are multi-tenant systems that share resources between different customers.
The economies of scale from public commercial cloud help to shield all tenants from security vulnerabilities and exploits in addition to providing highly monitored, logged and risk managed environments that rely on multiple layers of security controls. This level of investment in security is not feasible or commercially viable even for the largest individual enterprise customer.
Legislative and regulatory concerns
Many public sector and regulated industry customers are subject to local stewardship and information protection requirements. Lack of clarity and general uncertainty around an individual organizations role and responsibilities in relation to data location, third party processing requirements, internal reporting obligations all contribute to uncertainty for senior business decision-makers.
Organizational readiness and change management
While cloud computing provides tremendous benefits and opportunities, it is nonetheless a profound organizational change, that requires a re-thinking of IT operations, governance, process and systems integration. Many organizations simply need time to adjust to the new paradigm and help form a strategic advisor to position themselves for success in the cloud world.
Microsoft’s consulting services have been very effective, working actively with many of our customers to help them refine governance and re-calibrate their IT strategies.
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