By Frank Attaie, VP Cloud, IBM Canada
Over the course of our 100+ year history IBM has put the business needs of clients first. In an era of disinformation and data breaches, this means making smart decisions to store data securely – mitigating risks, satisfying compliance requirements and most importantly – protecting our client’s personal information. By the end of 2020 and into 2021 IBM will realize its goal of building three new data centres within 10 km of each other in Canada. While these are not our first data centres in Canada, it is our first multi-zone region (MZR). These data centres are located in proximity to ensure the highest level of availability, resiliency and a consistent suite of services to support enterprise workload requirements. The IBM Cloud is built to meet our clients’ data residency, low latency and security requirements. And the availability zone design – also known as our data centre network – provides an easy and effective way to operate applications, making them fault tolerant and scalable.
But what does all of this mean for our clients? Every action and interaction, every decision and relationship – every event occurring in the world is now expressed as data. And data is now considered one of the most valuable assets on earth – for both businesses and people alike. When used responsibly, data analytics can drive innovation and derive unique insights. At IBM, we believe that any insight derived from our clients’ data is their competitive advantage and it is also their decision how and when to leverage it. We believe our clients data is their data.
Managing data through its lifecycle in compliance with business, privacy and security regulatory requirements is our top priority. Many countries, Canada included, have data residency requirements. Our clients can be confident that with IBM Cloud, data residency rules can be met and adhered to even for companies that operate across borders. Where data resides plays a major role in protecting privacy and meeting the regulatory requirements for consumers data protection. The location of your cloud resources plays a significant role in how quickly and reliably your data can be accessed by users around the world. On the IBM Cloud, data is protected while at rest, in transit and in use.
IBM has designed its public cloud to be the industry’s most secure, open and enterprise-ready cloud, making it easier than ever for global enterprises to modernize and build new business applications on the cloud without jeopardizing security and control. We are uniquely suited to deliver cloud offerings that allow clients to maintain acceptable levels of control, secure high value transactions and data, and achieve documented compliance and on-going adherence to all required regulatory regimes. The expansion of our global cloud data centre footprint begins with multizone regions (MZR) planned for Toronto, Canada and Osaka, Japan by the end of 2020, building on the MZR in Sao Paulo, Brazil that we announced last year. These regions will help clients quickly deploy mission-critical workloads and applications across hybrid cloud environments, and gain access to a consistent set of IBM public cloud services – from enterprise-grade infrastructure to AI services.
So next time you’re faced with the decision of data ownership, access and security, look no further than IBM. Our new multizone region (MZR) will offer continuous availability with three data centers within 10 kms of each other. With decades of experience of operating data centres right here in Toronto, you can be sure that the close proximity will help ensure high availability and resiliency, a full and consistent set of services and most importantly – unparalleled levels of security to keep your data secure no matter the location.
Additional Resources
Discover the digital transformation trends in 2020 as Canadian organizations are spending more on Cloud and have flipped their operations from a traditional physical-centric model to a virtual-centric model to engage with employees, customers and partners.
