Canada is quickly becoming an appealing destination for global companies across all industries. This is largely due to the country’s talent base, growing digital economy, and proximity to the United States. In fact, Canada was recently ranked the top country for international business expansion.
Read on to learn why Canada is a rising star on the international business stage, some common challenges that global companies face there, and how Zenlayer serves as an infrastructure gateway into the country.
Canada’s growing digital economy and workforce are attracting businesses
Canada boasts a thriving digital economy supported by a highly educated, diverse, and tech-savvy workforce. Approximately 93.8% of people and 98% of businesses in Canada are connected to the internet, while 88% of Canadians own mobile devices, showcasing the country’s high level of digital integration.
Thriving digital industries in Canada
Here is a closer look at some thriving digital industries in Canada.
Technology
With a robust technology workforce fueled by talent from outside the country — 39% of computer programmers and 51% of software engineers are immigrants — Canada’s tech sector is projected to grow 22.4% between 2021 and 2024.
Gaming
The Canadian gaming industry is robust, with revenues predicted to reach $5.77 billion USD this year and a compound annual growth rate of 8.49% projected between 2023 and 2027.
AI
With Artificial Intelligence promising to impact everything from healthcare to agriculture to manufacturing and gaming, this industry is growing rapidly. By the end of the year, the AI industry in Canada is projected to surpass $6 billion USD in market value and reach $16.6 billion USD by 2030. The Montreal and Toronto markets are considered world-class deep learning research centres through academia and government funded initiatives.
Financial technology
Canada is playing a major role in the global financial technology (fintech) market, with Toronto serving as its largest commercial hub. The country now has more than 1,200 fintech firms, and technology talent now makes up 10.2% of total employment in Toronto.
According to a recent study, Canadian investors are increasingly embracing fintech companies for better investment performance. In fact, 40% of Canadian investors are eager to increase or maintain their use of digital service providers and assets in the next three years to enhance investment performance and unlock greater value.
Media & Entertainment
Movie and television production and post-production work is thriving in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, largely due to provincial tax incentives. Those cities are enjoying a significant amount of ongoing investment and growth from media companies due to talent and support of the industry. Post-production moves larges amount of data from location to location across the continent.
Telecom
Canada has world-class telecommunications, wireless, and fiber infrastructure, enabling businesses to provide broadband internet and network services to consumers and customers around the globe. It has access to north-south fiber-dense routes into the major United States markets such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, Seattle, and Los Angeles to name a few.
Challenges for global businesses entering Canada
From a business perspective, Canada offers all the advantages that come with being a stable country in a highly developed market. As a result, global companies can avoid many of the same challenges that come with doing business in emerging markets like Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East — like digital infrastructure gaps, and difficult regulatory complications.
However, there are still a few obstacles that international companies face when entering Canada. Preparing for these challenges in advance can pave the way for easier entry and a stronger return on investment.
Data residency
Businesses in Canada must adhere to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which is the country’s law relating to data privacy. PIPEDA does not require businesses to keep their data within Canada. However, it does restrict where and how businesses can store Canadians’ data. The Canadian government holds businesses accountable for all the data they collect, process, store, and transfer. Because of this, businesses are advised to work with local reputable cloud providers for data storage needs. Working with Canadian service providers can reduce data privacy risks and help ensure compliance with local and national regulations.
Latency
With limited cloud resources and regions in Western Canada, enterprise customers typically utilize cloud regions in Toronto and Montreal. This results in significant latency and a degraded user experience.
The best way to minimize latency and boost performance is to work with a cloud services provider offering nationwide bare metal services. For example, Zenlayer provides bare metal services in Toronto and Kelowna, as well as a cloud network hub in Calgary. Zenlayer Bare Metal regions in Canada, including Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Winnipeg, can be accessed by their closest major Canadian metros in under 15 ms, and they can also connect to the nearest Zenlayer U.S. region in less than 15ms.
How Zenlayer edge compute can help
If your organization is considering doing business in Canada, it helps to have a cloud provider like Zenlayer, which maintains cloud regions in Canada Central (Toronto) and Western Canada (Kelowna) working with high-performance computing infrastructure provider Hut 8. Zenlayer is uniquely positioned to drastically reduce latency and boost performance for users in Canada by pushing select compute and storage functions away from central nodes and closer to users throughout the region.
Zenlayer has a growing presence in Canada through Hut 8, and provides global companies across all industries with expedited and seamless access. Here are some ways Zenlayer helps companies expand into Canada more easily.
• Deploy services instantly: Businesses use Zenlayer’s hyperconnected cloud to instantly and securely deploy throughout Canada. With Zenlayer’s powerful bare metal service, businesses can quickly roll out applications, open-source systems, and add Kubernetes containers while also benefitting from varying contract term lengths.
• Seamlessly run AI workloads: Zenlayer’s bare metal servers are capable of CPU based AI workloads, and Hut 8 can provide additional compute, storage and network needs as well as more intensive, short-term GPU-based compute to support machine learning, VFX, and render workloads.
• Lower costs: By working with Zenlayer, companies can avoid large capital network expenses, and easily deploy services using existing infrastructure in the country’s major markets like Toronto, Quebec, Montreal, and Vancouver. Businesses can scale their operations without needing to invest in building and maintaining physical network infrastructure in each location, leading to cost savings and improved financial performance.
• Access tailored service offerings: Hyperscalers typically offer large, inflexible infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings that come with limited control over infrastructure and configurations. Zenlayer’s partnership with Hut 8 provides access to on-the-ground expertise and tailored service offerings, backed by SOC 2 Type 2 certification. This tailored approach helps to optimize cloud performance, adapt to changing demands, and meet business objectives.
Land and expand in Canada
Zenlayer offers unparalleled global coverage, with a vast private network that reaches 85% of the world’s internet population in under 25 milliseconds.
The company helps customers across all global regions improve digital experience with high-performance and cost-effective bare metal servers. And now, Zenlayer is excited to extend its services to companies that want to deploy digital infrastructure in Canada.
To learn more about how Zenlayer can accelerate your business growth in Canada, start a conversation with a solution expert.
