Post by Kevin Peesker, President of Microsoft Canada
The pace of digital transformation has accelerated rapidly over the course of the pandemic, and the organizations that are coping best with the challenges are those leveraging data and AI to meet changing demands. I’m proud and humbled that organizations across every industry trust Microsoft Azure to power their operations. As part of our commitment to delivering enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure to support Canada’s digital economy, we’re thrilled to launch Azure Availability Zones in our Canada Central region, and to add additional capabilities in our Canada East region effective immediately. This will bring an even wider set of capabilities for our customers to create resilient, highly available applications for mission-critical workloads using regions within Canada
Since announcing our significant investment in Canada’s cloud infrastructure in January, the world has changed in ways we could have never imagined; the cloud is even more critical in powering our everyday lives, from supporting remote learning and working to powering essential services and enabling business continuity. This has strengthened our resolve to help bolster Canada’s economic future and reinforces the need for both Azure Availability Zones and disaster recovery within Canada’s borders.
Over the past several months, we have worked with our customers to harness the full potential of Azure, driving intelligent data-driven experiences and creating business resiliency solutions. We designed Availability Zones with feedback and input from some amazing Canadian organizations along the way and already the impact has been remarkable.
For many companies, especially those in regulated industries, who are increasingly moving their critical applications to the cloud, resiliency and business continuity have become a crucial focus. With Azure Availability Zones now in Canada, we have a tremendous opportunity to empower our customers to choose the business continuity solution that is right for their organization, accelerate their digital transformation and unlock new innovations that will benefit Canadians and ultimately fuel our national recovery. The challenges of this pandemic cannot be understated, but we are in this together and I am optimistic about the strength of Canadians and excited to see the innovations to come.
