Educating the Cloud Industry in Canada

As part of the ongoing evolution of the business landscape in Canada, the need for more accessible resources to help share ideas in new technologies.  It’s impossible to assume that any organization can keep up with the fast change in technology and IT practices, we need to start to look to our vendor partners and industry associations are the source for open discussion on best practices and practical examples of “This is what we did, and this is what we learned from it”.

The first place to start is with industry groups that can provide practical information.  There are tons large, International groups like the Cloud Security Alliance and other neutral, volunteer-sponsored groups.  These groups focus on driving research and sharing information to help reduce the learning curve associated with cloud.

But these groups are often too large to provide an open group for discussion.  There are tons of LinkedIN groups dedicated to cloud and security, but there are so many that half become vendor product placement forums.

Canada has a huge advantage in that we  are small enough of a population, and one of the most digital-savvy.  We just need to start having better resources to help spread these ideas, which means forums dedicated to Canadian businesses, which address the unique compliance laws such as those around Privacy or the unique structure of our health organizations.

Additionally, we need to better engage our vendors and academics to help better share information through events, meetings or even social media.  The market is still young when it comes to next-generation business solutions, and Canada has the right service backbone.  We need to create a better forum so that our startups can be heard, our vendors share the latest developments, and our employees to start sharing information more effectively.