By Karna Gupta, President and CEO, ITAC

It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm that I address you as President and CEO of ITAC, via this month’s newsletter.

Over the last six decades, ITAC has been providing excellent policy and advocacy work. I look forward to building upon this legacy and making our position in the industry even more compelling. It is a privilege to have been given a platform from which I can showcase our Canadian ICT talent and to have the opportunity to make Canada a local and global technological powerhouse.

ITAC represents an extremely diverse ICT community – spanning telecommunications and internet services, ICT consulting services, health, microelectronics, hardware, software, electronic content, and more. In my day-to-day work, I look forward to drawing on my many years of private-sector experience in a number of these areas; and I am equally impassioned by the idea of learning about other technology sectors and how they contribute to a vibrant ICT sector and the economy as a whole.

I feel very fortunate to be joining ITAC at a time when technology is truly being seen as an answer to a variety of fiscal and social challenges being faced by our country. The launch of Canada’s Digital Economy Strategy, for instance, will affirm a number of the policy proposals ITAC has been pushing forward over the past several years. The Treasury Board’s current Strategic Review of operations and government spending will also highlight ways in which technology can make our country more efficient, productive and, as a result, more competitive and prosperous.

With this in mind, it seems fitting that this month’s issue of ITAC Online is focused on Cloud Computing as a technological tool that can contribute to a very broad and profound transformation of government operations. In the pages below, you will read about three of the many ITAC members who are doing industry-leading work in this area.

Reading about these companies made me ponder on how they fit into the grander tech eco-system in Canada; and how, when our community works together toward a common goal, there is nothing beyond our reach. Together, we have the potential to turn Canada into an unrivalled country where new, innovative companies can flourish.

What needs to happen first, however, is the creation of an adoption model for innovative technology solutions – one that will allow both private and public sector organizations in Canada to easily and naturally adopt innovative technologies as quickly as our ICT community can create them. Taking Cloud Computing as an example, we must look to the Canadian government to be a model adopter and long-term user. This will lead to the incubation and commercialization of more Canadian technology companies. Every time a truly great company is born, it creates an equally great spill-over effect resulting in specific centres of technological excellence. This is what our country needs; and thus the creation of such an adoption model will stand as my top priority as President and CEO of ITAC. It is undoubtedly a mammoth undertaking, but considering the potential within our member community, it lies within our reach.