OTTAWA, ONTARIO — (Marketwired) — 11/14/13 — CANARIE, a vital component of Canada-s digital infrastructure supporting research, education and innovation, and Algonquin College, a leading Canadian polytechnic, today announced that CANARIE-s cloud-based research and development testbed, DAIR, is being used to support Algonquin-s applied research partnerships with small businesses. Algonquin is the first Post-Secondary Educational Institution to use DAIR to support applied research projects with Small and Medium Enterprises (SME).
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The partnership provides Algonquin College students in any program, who are required to engage with SMEs in applied research projects, to use the powerful cloud resources available free of charge through CANARIE-s Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR) offering. DAIR provides cloud-based compute and storage resources to enable SME to test, develop, prototype and demonstrate products and applications, accelerating development timelines and strengthening competitive positioning. The partnership with Algonquin College leverages the College-s relationships with the small business community and provides students and their small business clients access to today-s most advanced technologies to promote development, validation and commercialization of innovative products.
Cloud technologies drive a meaningful competitive advantage for small businesses by providing computing resources that can quickly scale up or down to meet changing business needs. For Algonquin College and its SME partners, DAIR-s cloud resources are quickly deployable, significantly reducing the College-s ramp up time to 2-3 days, versus several weeks using traditional deployment and test methods. Students engage in meaningful experiential learning, while small businesses benefit from accelerated product development at no additional cost.
One small business already using DAIR resources is Personal Neuro, an Ottawa-based company that is working with Algonquin College to develop native cloud applications. The Neuroengineering company develops portable devices and associated software for improving brain health by monitoring and providing feedback on neural activity.
Algonquin College is also taking advantage of a portion of the DAIR resources to develop a “digital sandbox” to engage in further applied research. The DAIR resources available to the college leverage research funding and enable its researchers to engage in cutting-edge discovery that can lead to a range of commercial opportunities.
CANARIE-s relationship with Algonquin College is one of a series of partnerships it has developed to ensure a broad swath of Canadian entrepreneurs and small businesses benefit from the free cloud resources provided through DAIR. CANARIE has partnered with the City of Fredericton-s goFred Network to provide its business incubator with a block of DAIR resources that it offers as a complement to its existing programming. CANARIE is also working with the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) offered through the National Research Council, to ensure clients of this program are aware of the powerful resources available to them.
CANARIE welcomes partnerships with other colleges, business incubators and accelerators, and other organizations supporting small businesses who are interested in DAIR.
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“CANARIE-s DAIR program is a wonderful addition to the tools Algonquin has to offer to its small business clients as it assists them develop market-relevant products, processes and services through applied research projects. It will enable faculty and students to access leading-edge, cloud-based resources, helping them further develop their skills.” says Mark Hoddenbagh, Director of Applied Research of Algonquin College.
“CANARIE is fully supportive of the objective of commercializing ICT research and we are pleased to contribute through the DAIR program,” says Jim Ghadbane, President and CEO of CANARIE. “Introducing students and their small business partners to the transformative power of cloud technologies is essential to keeping Canada at the cutting edge of innovation.”
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About CANARIE:
CANARIE designs and delivers digital infrastructure and drives its adoption for Canada-s research, education and innovation communities. CANARIE keeps Canada at the forefront of digital research and innovation, fundamental to a vibrant digital economy.
CANARIE-s roots are in advanced networking, and CANARIE continues to evolve the national ultra-high-speed backbone network that enables data-intensive, leading-edge research and big science across Canada and around the world. One million researchers, scientists and students at over 1,100 Canadian institutions, including universities, colleges, research institutes, hospitals, and government laboratories have access to the CANARIE Network.
CANARIE also leads the development of research software tools that enable researchers to more quickly and easily access research data, tools, and peers. In support of Canada-s high-tech entrepreneurs, CANARIE offers cloud-computing services to help them accelerate product development and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Twelve provincial and territorial network partners, together with CANARIE, form Canada-s advanced network alliance. This powerful digital infrastructure connects Canada-s researchers and innovators provincially, nationally, and globally to the data, tools, colleagues, and classrooms that are at the heart of prosperity in the digital economy.
Established in 1993, CANARIE is a non-profit corporation, with the major investment in its programs and activities provided by the Government of Canada.
For more information, please visit: . About Algonquin College
The mission of Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology is to transform hopes and dreams into skills and knowledge, leading to lifelong career success. Algonquin College does this by offering hands-on, digitally connected applied learning in over 185 programs. Based in Canada-s capital, the Ottawa Valley, and Saudi Arabia, Algonquin College is the largest polytechnic institute in Eastern Ontario with 20,000 full-time and 37,000 part-time and online registrants.
For more information, please visit:
Contacts:
Ela Ienzi
Communications Manager
CANARIE Inc.
(613) 943-5432
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