IBM to establish cloud multizone region in Canada

IBM is expanding its global cloud footprint, with plans to launch a new IBM Cloud multizone region (MZR) in Canada by late 2020.

The MZR in Canada will add to IBM’s existing data centre capacity and become IBM’s first MZR in the country. This will help Canadian enterprises to securely deploy mission-critical workloads and applications across hybrid cloud environments.

Located in Toronto, the new MZR will be designed to provide clients with access to globally consistent IBM public cloud services, from enterprise-grade infrastructure to AI services. The MZR will be designed to increase service availability by minimizing interruptions, so that companies can safely keep their data and workloads up and running.

“As companies across Canada seek greater control of their data, this new capability will lead to improved resiliency, security and availability of the cloud platform right here on Canadian soil,” says Ayman Antoun, president, IBM Canada, in a release. “Expanding our cloud capabilities with a new multizone region will ensure that clients have greater access to the broad range of IBM cloud services.”

Together with Red Hat, IBM will accelerate clients’ digital transformation with the next-generation hybrid multi-cloud platform. A hybrid cloud approach will allow companies to gain visibility and control over their entire infrastructure and, in turn, do business in a much more secure and efficient manner. Eighty per cent of mission-critical workloads – from supply chains to core banking systems – still remain to be moved to the cloud.

Increasingly, organizations are combining elements from their on-premise infrastructure, and private and public clouds to create a comprehensive hybrid cloud strategy. To do this, companies need to manage and maintain these architectures, and ensure they are optimized to run efficiently across any environment.

“Two-thirds of Canadian enterprises are acting on digital transformation but many are challenged due to, in part, technical debt accumulated over time,” says Jason Bremner, vice-president, industry and business solutions for IDC Canada. “Canadian executives see hybrid cloud as a strategy to address their concerns because they can modernize applications that take advantage of different deployment models in a timely and secure manner.”

The Canadian MZR brings even more regional capacity and capability to achieve these efficiencies and is designed to deliver SLAs of 99.99 per cent uptime with a complete portfolio of services, including IBM Watson, blockchain, IoT and analytics.