Phil Shih, The 451 Group
Having infrastructure hosted out of a U.S.-based cloud means Canadian enterprises can be compliant with specific legal and regulatory requirements when operating in the country and helps reduce latency for Canadian firms serving U.S.-based audiences and customers, according to Philbert Shih, a Toronto-based senior analyst with the 451 Group.
Its for those reasons that CentriLogic Inc., a cloud provider with headquarters in Mississauaga, Ont. expanded its cloud offering into the U.S. recently. The new offering will mean greater flexibility for clients, said CEO Robert Offley.
“I think for a lot of companies, there’s more and more regulatory and compliance issues around where data is stored,” Offley told InfoExecutive. “So for companies who are delivering software-as-a-service to their clients, we’re finding more and more companies are concerned about where their data is actually housed. So if you’re in the healthcare industry, there’s a difference between … Canada versus U.S. (e-health regulations), then clearly the patient data needs to be stored within the country.”
Prior to the launch of cloud services hosted in the U.S., CentriLogic offered dedicated hosting facilities in Canada to its clients. With the expansion into the U.S., Offley said he was buoyed by the company’s build out of its infrastructure-as-a-service cloud, a scalable on-demand computing infrastructure for enterprises that provide content and information services over the Web. “From our standpoint, the cloud offering is an extension of what we’ve been doing for a number of years,” Offley said. “But I think the key difference is from a billing model, from a cost model, it’s variable. So for a corporate client, they can come in and take advantage of that computing power for as long or as little time as they want. It really gives them flexibility.”
