Tag: AWS Canada (Central) Region

In this blog post, learn how Amazon Web Services (AWS) helps Government of Canada (GC) customers move workloads into production in the AWS Canadian Regions. This requires putting their workloads through the Security Assessment & Authorization (SA&A) process and can pose headwinds for GC customers developing applications to support digital modernization efforts.

The Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS (LZA) solution deploys a cloud foundation that is architected to align with AWS best practices and multiple global compliance frameworks. Customers with highly-regulated workloads and complex compliance requirements can use the LZA to better manage and govern their multi-account environment. Some of these same customers are also using VMware Cloud on AWS to integrate on-premises vSphere environments, allowing them to move existing workloads to the cloud more quickly. In this blog post, explore the technical considerations related to integrating your LZA landing zone with your VMware Cloud on the AWS environment.

Disaster recovery is a crucial investment for public sector organizations. However, out-of-date disaster recovery and business continuity planning (BCP) policies prevent organizations from improving in these essential areas—like the assumption that the more distance between data centers, the better. But is there a point where more distance between data centers has diminishing risk mitigation returns? Enter the Goldilocks zone for disaster recovery, in which the distance between data centers is not too close, not too far, but just right.

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS) added more AWS services to its assessment of the AWS Canada (Central) Region, bringing the total number of assessed AWS services to 120. This provides Canadian public sector customers additional confidence that AWS Cloud services meet the Government of Canada’s security control requirements. Using these services in conjunction with the deployment of the open source AWS Secure Environment Accelerator (ASEA) solution reduces cloud service configuration time from months to days.

The cloud can help governments meet evolving citizen demands by enabling agility, cost savings, elasticity, and global reach. In 2008, Shared Services Canada, a federal department tasked with providing IT services to Canadian government, announced a streamlined procurement process to help support government agencies’ adoption of cloud services as part of the Government of Canada’s Cloud Adoption Strategy. To help Canadian government entities and their employees build innovative and citizen-centric services for their digital citizenry in the cloud, AWS created AWS DigiGov.

The Government of Canada (GC) signed a framework agreement with AWS to provide Commercially Available Cloud Services for workloads up to the level of Protected B/Medium Integrity/Medium Availability (PBMM). Having a contract vehicle with a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) is a significant step forward in modernizing digital government for Canadians, and will further the Government of Canada’s Cloud and digital strategy. This contract is in addition to the procurement vehicle for unclassified data announced in 2018.

Since the launch of the AWS Canada (Central) Region in December 2016, Canadian customers have been building on AWS to help their organizations transform. Based on customer demand, we have continued to add new features and services into the Canada Region. We have launched 231 new features and services so far this year, demonstrating our commitment for continued growth in Canada.