IBM has introduced two major advancements in its cloud capabilities in Canada, further strengthening offerings to enable Canadian organizations to scale AI deployments and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements for data storage and security including Canadian data sovereignty.
The company has officially opened the doors to its latest Cloud MZR in Montreal, Quebec, adding to its existing Cloud capabilities and investments across North America. This move supports clients in addressing their evolving regulatory requirements and leveraging technology such as Generative AI with our secured, enterprise cloud platform.
IBM Cloud offers a high-performance, flexible, AI-optimized infrastructure with bare metal and virtual server Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) options, for IBM watsonx and other generative AI solutions. With IBM watsonx now available on IBM Cloud at the Toronto MZR, Canadian organizations can deploy scalable, secure, and responsible AI solutions. This will enable Canadian organizations to achieve high levels of reliability, scalability, and security while ensuring compliance with Canada's stringent data privacy and residency requirements.
"Our focus is on meeting the evolving needs of our clients across Canada and today is a critical milestone in providing IBM infrastructure and solutions that can help them boost productivity and performance while keeping data in-country," said Deb Pimentel, IBM Canada President and General Manager, Technology Canada.
"While we continue enriching our existing Toronto Cloud MZR with cutting-edge AI capabilities, we're thrilled to officially open the doors to our new Montreal Cloud MZR. These developments highlight our relentless pursuit to build strong, capable cloud infrastructure across Canada, creating an ecosystem that drives AI innovation responsibly and securely."
Both the Montreal and Toronto MZR will offer numerous advantages to clients, including access to innovative enterprise cloud-as-a-service capabilities such as IBM Cloud VPC, Red Hat Cloud Native Products, IBM Power Virtual Server (VS), VMware Cloud Foundations (VCF) as a Service, and more:
- Data sovereignty: Enterprises in regulated industries such as government and financial services, can manage and store data locally to comply with Canada's stringent privacy regulations, ensuring sensitive information remains secure.
- Low latency: IBM Cloud's high-performance network connectivity significantly reduces latency for users across Canada, essential for real-time data processing.
- Scalable AI: The modular design enables businesses to scale operations seamlessly, provisioning resources quickly based on demand.
- Advanced generative AI access: Clients can leverage a variety of generative AI models including Llama-3-2-11b-vision-instruct and Granite-34b-code-instruct.
- Open hybrid cloud strategy: The MZRs provide the ability to integrate the best features and functions from any cloud or traditional IT environment and tap the unmatched pace and quality of innovations from the open-source community.
- IBM Power VS allows enterprises to deploy and manage virtual server instances running AIX, IBM i, or Linux workloads in a hybrid cloud environment, offering a flexible and scalable platform for mission-critical applications
- IBM's collaboration with Hugging Face brings the best of open-source AI models to the enterprise using the watsonx portfolio.
Canada-based IBM Cloud MZRs are designed to enable Canadian clients to deploy AI and mission-critical workloads with high levels of security and help clients address their data sovereignty and regulatory compliance requirements. This includes helping them on their journey to demonstrate their compliance with the Government of Canada's Protected B Medium Profile, a security level defined by the government for sensitive information and assets.
"Globally, enterprises, especially those in highly regulated sectors like financial services, government, and healthcare need solutions that are tailored to their unique challenges," said Rohit Badlaney, GM for IBM Cloud Product & Industry Platforms.
"With our latest advancements in Canada, we are extending IBM's enterprise cloud platform and sovereign cloud capabilities to Canadian organizations in these sectors, helping them to address their local regulatory requirements, keeping data secured, and maintaining it in the country."
As Canadian businesses seek to scale AI while ensuring trust and compliance, IBM Cloud and watsonx provide the necessary tools and platforms to maximize return on investment for AI initiatives. These new capabilities are the latest in IBM investments across North America to support clients on their modernization journeys. Our MZRs and data centers across Washington, D.C., Dallas, San Jose, Toronto, and Montreal strengthen our clients' ability to deploy locally and scale globally.
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