Google Cloud Opens Second Canada Cloud Region in Toronto

Google Cloud has opened a Toronto cloud region, its second location in Canada, as it seeks to serve a growing Canadian customer base.

The Toronto region, which was initially announced in early March 2020, follows the opening of the Montreal region in 2018, and is the company’s 28th worldwide, reads a new blog post from the company.

The move comes after more than a year of significant digitalization for Canadian businesses. According to a May survey by KPMG in Canada, 68 percent of Canadian businesses said they’ve accelerated their digital transformation strategies due to the pandemic, and 57 per cent said they’d increased their budget for digitalization.

“The past year has proved how important easy access to digital infrastructure, technical education, training and support are to helping businesses respond to the pandemic,” Jim Lambe, Google Cloud Canada’s managing director, said in a blog post.

Here’s what Google Cloud’s new Toronto region means for the future of cloud in Canada, the tech giant explains:

• The launch of Google’s Toronto region highlights the rapid growth of cloud-based technology and services as Canada’s businesses across all industries continue making big investments to accelerate their digital transformation.
• The new Toronto Google Cloud region is building on growing demand from Canadian customers across every industry, along with global companies who are expanding in Canada.
• The Toronto region will make it easier and faster for Canadian companies to leverage Google Cloud’s on-demand network that’s faster, more reliable and less expensive than one they could build themselves – along with being the cleanest cloud in the industry.
• It will also enable customers to meet local regulatory and compliance requirements and provide more disaster recovery options for customers, which is critical for financial institutions, public sector organizations, online retailers and other businesses operating in highly regulated industries.

According to the press release, the new Toronto region will help businesses “prevent service outages” and provide faster access to Google Cloud Platform services such as Compute Engine, App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Bigtable, Spanner, and BigQuery.

The press release also included quotes from a number of Google’s Canadian clients, including TELUS, Scotiabank, Natural Resources Canada, Accenture, Deloitte, and Softchoice.

Learn more over at Google Cloud’s blog.