Today, CDW Canada, the strategic end-to-end technology partner that turns customer ambition into outcomes, released new research exploring how Canadian organizations are moving from artificial intelligence (AI) deployment to realizing business value. The report, Canada’s AI Workplace Evolution from Adoption to Accountability, draws on a survey conducted by Earnscliffe on behalf of CDW Canada of 1,011 Canadian office workers across organizations of varying sizes and industries throughout Canada.
The report finds AI is now firmly embedded in Canadian workplaces, with daily use of workplace-approved AI tools nearly doubling year over year (31 percent, up from 18 percent). But as adoption becomes mainstream, organizations are increasingly focused on a more pressing challenge: turning AI investments into measurable business outcomes. The research also points to the rapid rise of agentic AI, with one third of employees already reporting the use of AI agents capable of completing multistep workflows, making recommendations and helping drive outcomes.
Agentic AI emerges as the next frontier
The next phase of workplace AI is already taking shape, signalling a shift from AI tools that assist with individual tasks to systems that can help execute more complex workflows and contribute to outcomes.
The research suggests organizations are beginning to move from simply consuming AI technologies to actively shaping them. Nearly one-in-three agentic AI users report their organization is already building AI agents in-house.
At the same time, the findings highlight the importance of employee enablement. Workers who receive hands-on AI training report significantly higher levels of confidence using AI (46 percent are very confident) than those who receive no formal support (23 percent), underscoring the growing need for practical, role-specific training as AI capabilities become more advanced.
Trust remains the biggest obstacle to deeper AI adoption
Employee attitudes toward AI continue to trend positively. Curiosity remains the dominant sentiment among workers (42 percent) and outweighs the percentage that are worried about AI, suggesting employees are increasingly open to AI in the workplace.
However, trust continues to be a barrier to broader and deeper adoption. Accuracy and reliability are among the top AI concerns across daily users (31 percent), less frequent users (24 percent) and those not yet using approved tools (43 percent).
The findings also show that barriers vary depending on an employee’s experience with AI. More advanced users tend to focus on privacy and security concerns, while those who have yet to embrace AI are more likely to question both its reliability and its relevance to their role.
Organizations are beginning to see value, but many still struggle to measure it
The research suggests AI is delivering benefits beyond simple efficiency gains. Compared to 2025, employees with access to AI at work increasingly report improvements in productivity (58 percent, up 11 points), quality of outputs (54 percent, up 15 points) and innovation (48 percent, up 11 points), indicating that organizations are beginning to realize broader business value from AI investments.
Despite this progress, many organizations continue to face a measurement gap. While more organizations report tracking specific KPIs to evaluate AI performance than they did a year ago (38 percent, up from 24 percent), a significant number still lack formal frameworks to assess ROI (23 percent) or are unsure whether such measurement exists (23 percent).
As AI programs mature and investment scrutiny intensifies, the ability to measure and communicate impact is critical to ensuring effective adoption. For CDW Canada, that means helping organizations move beyond AI implementation to building sustainable programs grounded in strategy, employee enablement, governance and measurable business outcomes.
For Canadian organizations, the next phase of AI success will be defined by trust, workforce readiness and measurable outcomes. As organizations explore emerging technologies such as agentic AI, CDW Canada is helping customers build the strategies, skills and governance frameworks needed to turn AI investments into lasting business value.
To learn more about the state of AI in Canadian workplaces, download the full 2026 Canadian AI Workspace Trends Report: Canada’s AI Workplace Evolution from Adoption to Accountability.
Join the conversation online by following @CDWCanada on X and LinkedIn.
About the Survey
This study was conducted by Earnscliffe on behalf of CDW Canada. Earnscliffe is a member of CRIC and abides by the ESOMAR code of Market, Opinion, and Social Research and Data Analytics and CRIC standards, including the CRIC Public Opinion Research Standards and Disclosure Requirements.
The online survey was in field from June 15 to 25, 2026, with a sample of 1,011 Canadian office workers who work in organizations with at least 20 employees and use a computer in an office setting 11 or more hours a week, using Leger’s LEO panel. Quotas were set for business size, sector, region, age and gender to align with sample structure from previous waves, and data is unweighted.
The survey was conducted in English. Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error.
AI Value Realization Is Driving a New Phase of Cloud Modernization for Canadian Organizations
Posted in Commentary with tags CDW on November 9, 2026 by itnerdCDW Canada today released its 2026 State of Digital Infrastructure and AI in Canada Report, with research insights by IDC, exploring how Canadian organizations are managing hybrid infrastructure and AI solutions while navigating the shift to digital sovereignty. The study, conducted and analyzed independently by IDC Canada, surveyed 700 senior business leaders at small, medium-sized and large organizations across industries and provinces in Canada.
The report found that Canadian organizations are entering a new phase of AI maturity, where success will be determined less by access to technology and more by the ability to operationalize it. That shift is reshaping cloud priorities as organizations modernize applications, strengthen data foundations and adopt flexible hybrid infrastructure to support AI while maintaining greater control over where data lives and how it is used.
AI value realization is accelerating cloud modernization
AI adoption is already well established among Canadian organizations, with 77 percent using copilots or conversational AI, 60 percent using generative AI and 31 percent testing agentic AI. Most organizations are also choosing to buy or customize rather than build from scratch, with 85 percent purchasing or adapting AI solutions instead of developing their own models.
As adoption matures, organizations are turning their attention to realizing value from these investments and are creating the environments needed to run AI at scale. That is putting greater pressure on the technology and data foundations that support AI. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) say AI has led them to modernize applications and infrastructure in the cloud, while 59 percent say it has accelerated cloud adoption. Scalability is the top data architecture improvement required to support AI, cited by 63 percent of respondents.
Hybrid cloud becomes the foundation for AI at scale
As organizations modernize their cloud environments, hybrid cloud is emerging as the preferred operating model. Nearly two-in-three (63 percent) Canadian organizations prefer a hybrid approach, giving them the flexibility to place AI and other business-critical workloads where performance, cost, security and compliance requirements best align.
The appeal of hybrid cloud is particularly strong among medium-sized and small organizations, where simplicity and cost control can outweigh the benefits of operating across multiple public cloud providers. Large organizations are more likely to use multicloud environments to access differentiated capabilities, while smaller organizations often use hybrid strategies to keep predictable workloads in lower-cost environments. For mid-sized organizations in particular, a manageable hybrid environment can provide the flexibility to support new AI workloads without introducing unnecessary cost and complexity.
Managing multiple environments is the next challenge for Canadian organizations. Real-time management and monitoring (63 percent), AI and GenAI automation (51 percent) and cloud orchestration (36 percent) are the top areas for increased investment. While hybrid can offer a simpler path than multicloud for smaller organizations, operational complexity remains a challenge. Smaller organizations are more inclined to manage each cloud environment using its native tools rather than a unified management layer. While simpler to implement initially, this approach can fragment visibility and operations across the cloud estate, with downstream implications for automation maturity.
The operational challenge extends to resilience and security. Over half (57 percent) of organizations now describe their infrastructure as sufficiently or exceptionally resilient, up from 48 percent in 2024. Cybersecurity remains the top concern (62 percent) and the leading priority for futureproofing (69 percent).
Trusted data is critical to AI value
As organizations put AI to work across more of the business, the quality, security and accessibility of their data become increasingly important. More than half of organizations have standardized data management on cloud or dedicated platforms, particularly for integration, governance and privacy.
However, significant gaps remain. More than half (55 percent) say their data management capabilities need improvement, with data security (56 percent) and data fragmentation (54 percent) cited as the leading challenges. Looking ahead, organizations are prioritizing data privacy (49 percent), security (48 percent) and quality (35 percent).
Modern cloud strategies balance scale and sovereignty
Canadian organizations increasingly view digital sovereignty as a matter of governance, trust and business resilience. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) are already on the path to sovereign cloud adoption. More than one quarter have moved beyond the planning stage, with 10 percent using sovereign cloud extensively and 16 percent deploying it for select workloads. The remainder are either piloting sovereign cloud solutions or have plans for implementation within the next 12 months.
Evolving privacy regulations and growing expectations around data governance are driving the change. Quebec’s Law 25 has set a higher bar for how organizations manage and transfer personal information. At the same time, a growing range of Canadian cloud offerings are giving organizations real options. Among large organizations, 27 percent already use Canadian cloud providers and another 24 percent plan to make the shift within the year.
Rather than applying one standard, Canadian organizations are matching the level of protection to each workload. Most prefer to stay on major global cloud platforms and add their own sovereign controls, such as keeping data in Canada, holding their own encryption keys and setting clear policies on who can access their data and under what conditions. Of respondents, 34 percent have already taken this approach, which keeps the scale and features of global providers.
As AI moves from early adoption toward enterprise-wide deployment, the measure of success will increasingly shift from how much AI organizations adopt to the value they generate from it. Canadian organizations that combine trusted data, strong governance and flexible hybrid infrastructure will be best positioned to turn AI investment into measurable business outcomes. To read the full report, visit http://www.cdw.ca/cloudreport.
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