Cloud computing ETFs have benefitted from the historic shift to working-from-home and distance learning brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, though some providers expect the surge to continue long after the global health crisis ends.

“This has been a phenomenal year for cloud computing stocks, they have been extremely well positioned in this environment,” said Jay Jacobs, senior vice-president and head of research and strategy for Global X Management Company LLC, which first launched its Global X Cloud Computing ETF (CLOU-Q) in April 2019. The ETF has surged by about 60 per cent in the past year.

Other cloud-based ETFs such as the Wisdom Tree Cloud Computing Fund (WCLD-Q) and First Trust Cloud Computer ETF (SKYY-Q) have risen by about 80 per cent and 45 per cent, respectively, over the past year.

“The reason why we continue to remain very bullish on the space is because preferences really have changed,” Mr. Jacobs says. “Yes, we will have a vaccine that will ultimately get distributed and there will be a post-pandemic life at some point, but from what we can tell in terms of surveys and announcements from different companies, is that use cases for cloud computing are not going away.”

Now that people have incorporated these software-as-a-service platforms into their work and personal lives, Mr. Jacobs says “there is a real stickiness to it, where you don’t want to go back to your old ways of doing things.”

ETF provider Evolve Funds Group Inc. chief executive office Raj Lala agrees the pandemic has accelerated the use of cloud computing, “but it has also resulted in a long-term behavioural shift.”

Mr. Lala cites e-signature platform DocuSign Inc. as an example. “Now that people have started to use DocuSign, do you really think companies and individuals are going to go back to printing a document, signing it and sending it back? Probably not,” he says.

Providers take a wide range of approaches in selecting the individual companies to include in their cloud ETF products. Some focus more on physical cloud infrastructure such as data centres and server makers while others are more heavily weighted toward cloud-based services such as video conferencing, enterprise software and virtual private network (VPN) companies.

Evolve used to include cloud computing as a component in its Evolve Innovation Index ETF (EDGE-T), but Mr. Lala said the sector has now “run into the size where it really does merit its own fund.”

Evolve plans to launch what it calls Canada’s first cloud-computing ETF, the Evolve Cloud Computing Index Fund (DATA-T), which submitted a preliminary prospectus to securities regulators Nov. 12 and will set a date to begin trading after receiving final approval.

While Canadian investors and advisors can access the U.S.-listed [cloud computing ETFs], they will have to invest in U.S. dollars,” Mr. Lala says, “whereas with our fund you would be able to invest on a currency-hedged basis, which for a lot of people is pretty important.”

While DATA is set to be the first Canadian ETF with ‘cloud’ in its title, Nick Mersch, an associate portfolio manager at ETF provider Purpose Investments, argues Canadian investors already have multiple ways of gaining exposure to the sector using their own currency.

“There is a lot of a marketing component” behind Evolve’s claim of launching DATA as Canada’s “first” cloud computing ETF, says Mr. Mersch, who runs the Purpose Global Innovators Fund (PINV-T), a technology fund with an ETF structure that takes a broader approach. The fund is up about 40 per cent over the past year.

“Cloud and AI [artificial intelligence] and automation are our main themes, but with an enterprise software core holding, and since a lot of these applications are indeed built in the cloud there is a lot of overlap,” he says.

“You really need to have a zoom-out lens about whether it is just a specific cloud-based application, or do these software companies actually touch everything else?”

Choosing the right cloud computing ETF can be more challenging because “there is no S&P 500 of cloud computing or of battery technology or of robotics,” says Mr. Jacobs of Global X. “With all thematic ETFs, there is a lot of work that goes into the backend of designing the index [and] really scoping out what is the theme and how are we going to access it.”

Among the key differentiators is how the different cloud computing ETFs account for the elephants in the room: tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM that dominate the cloud computing industry despite only earning a fraction of their overall revenues from offering cloud services.

“What we have done is specifically include exposure to those companies, but capped them so that in aggregate they [represent no more than] 10 percent of our fund,” Mr. Jacobs says of CLOU. “That is a pretty good differentiator for us because I think a lot of our competitors often include those companies at a much bigger weight.”

As cloud services become increasingly essential, some have compared investing in cloud ETFs to buying utility stocks.

“The difference with utilities though is utilities are regulated on the pricing side,” Mr. Jacobs says. “The reason why that is important is because, for cloud computing, it is really a fixed cost business, so as they add more users or increase prices it is really additive to their earnings.”

“In 2020, the Zooms of the world and the Salesforces of the world were adding clients very quickly and knew the economy was bad so they gave [lower] prices to get people into the system,” he says. “Starting in 2021, due to the fixed-cost nature of their businesses, they are going to have a lot of power to raise prices and a lot of companies are just going to have to eat that cost.”

That trend is only half of the bull case behind cloud computing ETFs, with Mr. Lala noting “increasing connectivity” more broadly is also positive for the sector.

“We have added one billion people online just in the past year; in 2019 just over four billion people had Internet access and today over five billion people are connected online,” Mr. Lala says. “You are definitely seeing a massive shift of people moving online and that is what cloud-based technology is all about.”

GitHub Desktop 2.0: What Changed and Why It Matters

GitHub Desktop 2.0 marked a significant step forward for developers who prefer a graphical interface over the command line. The release focused on two highly requested Git operations — stashing and rebasing — while also adding co-author attribution, emoji support in commit messages, and tighter pull request integration with GitHub.com.

According to GitHub’s Billy Griffin, the update was driven directly by user feedback: “We’re focused on listening to our users and supporting the workflows you need to be most successful when building software. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or brand new to concepts like version control, GitHub Desktop puts the things you need most front and centre.”

Stashing: Save Work-in-Progress Without Committing

One of the most common friction points in a Git-based workflow is needing to switch branches before your current changes are ready to commit. Previously, this often meant either making a premature commit or discarding changes temporarily — neither of which is ideal.

GitHub Desktop 2.0 surfaces Git’s stash functionality through a user-friendly interface. When switching branches with uncommitted work, developers are now prompted to either:

• Bring the changes to the new branch — useful when the work is relevant to the branch you’re switching to.
• Leave the changes on the current branch — stashing them so you can return later without losing progress.

As Griffin explains: “It’s a common situation: you’re in the middle of reproducing and fixing a bug, and you need to switch context temporarily… In Desktop 2.0, if you’re not ready to commit your work, you can choose to bring your changes to the new branch or keep them on your current branch.”

For teams practicing trunk-based development or juggling multiple feature branches, this reduces interruption and makes context-switching significantly less disruptive.

Rebasing: Keep Commit History Clean

Many teams enforce a linear commit history to make git log and code review easier to follow. Before Desktop 2.0, developers who wanted to rebase rather than merge had to drop to the command line — a barrier for less experienced contributors.

Desktop 2.0 adds native rebase support, giving teams the choice of how to integrate branches without leaving the application. Griffin notes:

“Developers have also shared that many teams prefer a clean commit history without merge commits… If you’re used to merging branches normally, you can still continue using the same workflow. But if you work in a repository where you don’t want those merge commits, Desktop 2.0 now supports rebasing to help you keep that commit history clean.”

Importantly, the merge workflow remains available — this is an opt-in capability, not a replacement. Teams can standardise on whichever strategy suits their project without forcing individuals to the CLI.

Co-Author Attribution: Giving Credit Where It’s Due

Pair programming and mob programming sessions often result in commits that represent the work of multiple people, but only the person who pushes gets credited. GitHub Desktop 2.0 addresses this by allowing developers to tag co-authors directly in the commit UI.

To add a co-author, you mention their GitHub username in the commit dialog. GitHub then resolves the attribution and includes it in the commit metadata, ensuring contribution graphs and pull request history accurately reflect everyone involved. This is especially valuable for teams that track individual contributions for performance reviews or open-source recognition.

Emoji Support in Commit Messages

GitHub Desktop 2.0 also added support for emoji in commit messages — a small but popular quality-of-life improvement. Projects that follow conventions like Gitmoji use emoji prefixes to communicate the nature of a change at a glance (e.g., 🐛 for bug fixes, ✨ for new features). Desktop 2.0 makes composing these messages easier without copy-pasting from external sources.

Pull Request Integration: Bridging GitHub.com and Your Local Machine

A key theme of Desktop 2.0 is reducing the number of times a developer needs to switch between the desktop application and the browser. The release introduced tighter pull request integration:

• Open any pull request from GitHub.com directly in Desktop — the branch is checked out locally and ready for review or testing without manual setup.
• Suggested next steps after a commit — once a commit is complete, the application surfaces contextual actions, such as creating a pull request, reducing the cognitive overhead of remembering what to do next.
• Easier pull request creation — the workflow from local branch to pull request is now more streamlined, reducing the number of manual steps required.

Griffin described the direction: “Looking forward, you can expect to see more in GitHub Desktop that surfaces context from GitHub.com to help make you even more productive on your local machine.”

The Broader Goal: Lowering the Barrier to Entry

GitHub Desktop 2.0 reflects GitHub’s stated goal of making professional-grade version control workflows accessible to developers at all skill levels. Features like stashing and rebasing have long been available via the Git CLI, but their complexity makes them intimidating for newcomers. By surfacing these capabilities with clear UI prompts and descriptive language, GitHub Desktop 2.0 helps teams standardise workflows without requiring every team member to have deep Git expertise.

For DevOps teams onboarding junior developers or contributors from non-engineering backgrounds, this kind of tooling can meaningfully reduce training overhead and improve consistency in how code changes are managed.

Summary of GitHub Desktop 2.0 Features

GitHub Desktop is a free, open-source application available for macOS and Windows. The source code is available on GitHub.