All departments have access to cloud solutions. Across the country, eight vendors who meet our safety standards have prequalified.
The demand is very diverse. Some departments will want to use cloud computing to place outside services on these platforms, which have a great deal of elasticity. Other departments will want to use cloud platforms to build information services for the purpose of sharing information with Canadians or with external partners. There are multiple needs.
The beauty of cloud computing is its elasticity and its ability to meet the demand during the peak period, without clients having to build a monster infrastructure, so that they only pay for what is consumed.
Your question leads me to say that cloud computing has experienced significant growth. Annual expenditures in this area have gone from $3 million three years ago to just over $100 million last year.
There has been a large increase, but the needs are varied. A number of departments use cloud computing on a very specialized basis. About 4% or 5% of our application operations are in cloud computing, or even 8%, according to the latest figures I saw. So it's very variable.