CENGN national roadshow in Ottawa to affirm Canada’s leadership in Next Generation Networks

Announced in November, 2014 with $11.7 million over five years in funding from the Government of Canada’s Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program, CENGN is hitting the ground running with a five-city national roadshow that concludes on February 10 in Ottawa. With a panel of communication industry experts in each city, the goal is to discover and unlock the potential of Canadian Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) companies. CENGN accelerates innovation into profitable enterprise and consumer products with unprecedented access to global markets.

CENGN, the Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, is an industry-led consortium of corporate, academic and research members including Alcatel-Lucent, Allstream, BTI Systems, Cisco, EWA Canada, EXFO, Invest Ottawa, JDSU, Juniper Networks, Mistral Ventures, Rogers and Telus. Together, CENGN’s heavy hitters are responsible for 90% of Canada’s annual telecom R&D spend.

“Next generation networks is a $5 trillion market, and presents megatrend opportunities for countries and companies that can move quickly,” said CENGN’s President and CEO Ritch Dusome. “Recognizing Canada’s telecom strengths, is why Multinational Enterprise (MNE) leaders from around the world have come together to back CENGN commercialization projects with the combined power of 199,000 people, $11 billion of R&D and $84 billion of revenue.”

More than 200 people have attended stops in Edmonton, Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. The final stop is Ottawa Feb. 10  8:30 AM to 11 AM at the CENGN Headquarters 555 Legget Drive, Tower A, Suite 600 in Kanata.

The roadshow presents the CENGN value proposition to prospective Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and researchers that have products and services in game-changing technologies such as Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). These address the growing demand for exploding Internet content on multiple platforms, and also underpin cloud-based applications, security and the Internet of Things (IoT).

As well as promising SME and institutional technologies that could be commercialized in a 3 to 15-month period, CENGN is on the hunt for top-gun research talent to staff its Ottawa multi-vendor test and verification lab: “We are always on the lookout for the best talent,” according to Dusome, who was the catalyst behind the hiring of more than 2,000 engineers in his last position as Director of Product Management for CISCO Systems in Ottawa. His 28-year career also included stops at Bell Canada and TD Bank.

“We need people who want to plant Canadian tech on the global map in a big way,” he said. “I’ve spent most of my career working in Canada but was mostly focused on global mandates. It’s exciting to think about CENGN’s pure-play focus on accelerating technology that could create the next made-in-Canada telecom superstar.”

Each project selected from prospective SME submissions receives commercialization acceleration support equivalent to $50,000 - $100,000, with target completion times of 3-15 months. CENGN’s comprehensive multi-vendor testing and validation facilities are unique in the world, which cuts costs and speeds time to market. A list of CENGN benefits for SMEs with promising technologies includes:

– Dedicated engineering team and experts in communications including SDN and NFV – Physical and virtual multi-vendor commercialization, test, certification, and validation platform (open stack and enterprise stack) – Dedicated high-speed fibre networks – Additional services for validating advanced products, applications, and services including: performance, certification, verification and conformance testing – Business, legal, marketing and mentorship support

The format of the CENGN city stops features an overview of the project selection process followed by a panel session with CENGN MNE member companies to discuss their technology areas of interest. There will also be plenty of networking time for SME companies and researchers present their technologies to CENGN MNEs.  Feb. 27 is the deadline to submit proposals for the first round of projects. CENGN’s team is also visiting colleges and universities to drum up interest in assisting CENGN projects and/or joining its Ottawa lab.

For more information visit www.CENGN.ca or contact:

Kelly Daize VP of Business and Development and Marketing CENGN Phone: +1 (613) 878-3126 Email: kdaize@cengn.ca

Paul Brent Senior Communications Strategist market2world communications inc. Phone: +1 (613) 256-3939 Email: paul@market2world.com