Telecom Lead America: IBM Canada and Ontario are
partnering with several universities of Ontario to create a new $210 million
virtual Research and Development Centre in Ontario.
For this project, IBM will invest up to $175
million through December 2014, forming the IBM Canada Research and
Development Center to serve as a foundation for the research initiative.
As we begin a new century of innovation for IBM, we’re
investing in this industry-building initiative to further advance Canada’s
competitiveness in the global digital economy, both now and in the future.
Together with our government, academic and industry partners, we will apply
new, collaborative approaches to Canada’s productivity and competitiveness
challenges by more fully leveraging IBM’s 100-year legacy of research and
development leadership here in Ontario,” said John Lutz, President, IBM Canada.
The Ontario Government is investing $15
million towards the creation of this Centre. The Canada Government
will contribute $20 million to allow a consortium of seven southern
Ontario post-secondary institutions and IBM to install two high-performance IBM
Blue Gene/Q supercomputers and develop a cloud computing and agile computing
platform to underpin the initiative’s research collaboration.
The research projects will be supported by an expansion
of IBM’s software development labs in Markham and Ottawa, and the new high
performance data centre in Barrie
The university consortium will have access to a new
Barrie, Ontario based IBM data centre, which will be fully operational in the
fall of 2012. Other Canadian researchers and small to medium-sized enterprises
will also be invited to join the consortium.
The Centre’s research will focus on data management for
health care, water conservation and management, energy management and rapid
urbanization and aging infrastructure in cities, such as managing traffic
lights to improve traffic flow.
A few months back, IBM launched its new software to help organizations manage and secure the explosion
of smartphones and tablets in the workplace, while also managing laptops,
desktops and servers.
editor@telecomlead.com
