Microsoft announced plans to deliver commercial cloud services — Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online — from Canada in 2016.
Kevin Turner, worldwide chief operating officer of Microsoft, said: “Investment in a Canadian cloud demonstrates how committed we are to bringing even more opportunity to Canadian businesses and government organizations.”
IT market research agency IDC says public cloud spend in Canada is expected to grow to $2.5 billion by next year. Public cloud infrastructure will grow at 45 percent by 2016.
Availability of Azure is anticipated in early 2016, followed by Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online later in 2016.
Today, Microsoft delivers cloud-based email, Office 365, and CRM Online to more than 80,000 Canadian businesses. Companies like Air Canada, Quebecor and Hatch are saving money while empowering their employees to collaborate with Office 365, Yammer, and Skype for Business.
Diply.com, an Ontario-based start-up, is leveraging Microsoft Azure. The company delivers 850 million page views per month on Microsoft Azure and owns no servers. Diply.com is able to rent servers from Microsoft by the hour based simply on the demand they receive.
“We only pay for what we use,” said Gary Manning, CTO and co-founder at Diply.com. “We estimate our cost per 1,000 users is only $0.07! We’d never be able to build that back-end infrastructure ourselves.”
Quebecor is benefiting from Microsoft infrastructure.
Richard Roy, vice president of IT and chief technology officer of Quebecor, said: “We only pay for what we use, eliminating the need for costly up-front investment in hardware. Microsoft has completely transformed the way we build new IT environments.”
The City of Regina partnered with Microsoft Canada in 2013 to become one of Canada’s first public sector organizations to utilize Office365.
Chris Fisher, director of IT, City of Regina, said: “That strategic decision, which raised eyebrows amongst our peers, continues to pay dividends as the product matures.”
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