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When politics invades IT management
Tech news and geopolitics place data sovereignty at the heart of strategic decisions for Quebec and Canadian companies more than ever before. However, when it comes to making technological choices, emotions should not overpower considerations of medium and long-term impacts that could be harmful to the organization.
As we have seen in a previous article, it can be risky to believe that data sovereignty requires a total reliance on 100% local solutions, which, in reality, do not exist. The Quebec and Canadian technology market largely depends on foreign solutions, particularly American ones.
Is data sovereignty an impossible dream?
Microsoft, AWS, and Google dominate the cloud sector, while Lenovo, Dell, HPE, and Cisco hold the lion’s share in equipment. When you add software giants like Microsoft (again), Oracle, and Salesforce, it quickly becomes apparent that consuming exclusively national products is science fiction.
Once aware of these facts, we quickly conclude that the concept of sovereignty can ultimately be reduced to an address on a door; and even then, nearly all data centers today are foreign-owned.
So, is it possible to create data sovereignty in Quebec?
The closest an organization here can get is by creating its own cloud environment with internal infrastructure. However, this would still be composed of foreign equipment, managed by predominantly American software, and certainly secured by overseas systems. Opening up to the world is inevitable because alternatives are rare, often not sufficiently developed, and especially less reliable.
What to do?
How to maximize this need for independence without compromising the agility, innovation, and performance of organizations? The good news is that it is possible to find a balance between sovereignty, independence, and performance by revisiting the supply chain. The goal here is not to abandon the best solutions available even if they come from elsewhere, but to use them intelligently by maximizing the expertise available locally.
Extending the Canadian supply chain to rebalance dependency.
Even if they are American or foreign-owned, technology leaders mostly have offices, assets, employees, and a supply chain entirely based in Canada. They are well integrated into our practices, embrace our values, and respect our legislation, and have done so for several decades for most. Over time, they have developed networks composed of thousands of partners in Quebec and Canada, including ITI, a rare major IT service provider that is exclusively Canadian-owned with its 400 specialists.
By leveraging local expertise, organizations ensure to maximize the sovereignty of their data.
By advocating for a strategic and technological approach focused on infrastructure control, security, compliance, and technological autonomy, the latter goes beyond hardware and software and is practically implemented through:
Extending the Canadian technological supply chain does not mean moving away from innovation; rather, it is about intelligently managing it according to best practices and in alignment with our legislation.
A Canadian IT service provider, such as ITI, can play a key role in data sovereignty by offering secure, compliant, and independent solutions from large foreign multinationals while still using their technologies. This seems paradoxical, but this control is genuine and achievable.
Adopt a realistic and viable approach
As we have seen, reality is very nuanced and it is impossible to exclude all dependence on foreign technologies. What matters is adopting a pragmatic approach that ensures maximum control and security without sacrificing agility and performance. In other words, to implement a viable and sustainable strategy that protects the interests of Canadian companies without falling into the trap of politics.
