Alberta signs agreements with global ICT companies as part of diversification strategy

Sixth annual mission to California

The annual mission to California by Alberta Innovation and Sciences (AIS) has yielded key agreements that will see its research institutions collaborate with four of the world’s largest information technology firms. Deals with Microsoft Corp, IBM Centre for Advanced Studies, Sun Microsystems and HP Labs are the latest public-private research collaborations established by the province and its research institutions. Although they are ostensibly in the realm of information and communications technologies (ICT), they also apply directly to the government’s other strategic priorities — energy and life sciences.

The latest trade mission is the sixth annual excursion for the Alberta government and has two components: outreach to expatriate Albertans and corporate liaison. The latter includes the finalization of agreements negotiated with firms in the preceding months and exploratory work for future deals. Provincial funding for the agreements is being drawn from a commercialization fund established at AIS.

“Our strategic plan has four thrusts including unleashing innovation and this is where it all fits. We’re leveraging investment with the private sector in all areas to advance our economy in our key areas,” says AIS minister Victor Doerksen. “Our agreement with Microsoft, for instance, is ICT but it’s also energy which is a technology business.”

Doerksen says California has been a consistent focus of his ministry’s missions since their inception, due to the sheer size of that state’s technology sectors and the number of Albertans and Canadians who have moved there.

“We held two ex-pat receptions in Los Angeles and Palo Alto. Many ex-pats are highly placed and are often our best conduits into companies,” he says.

CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE

The Microsoft deal will see the creation of two new centres of excellence for energy manufacturing technologies at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) and the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). Of the four agreements reached, the Microsoft pact is the most significant in dollars terms. During the first phase, Microsoft is providing $8 million worth of software, complemented by $1 million from AIS and $980,000 from the two Institutes.

The NAIT Manufacturing Software Solutions Centre will allow researchers to work with manufacturers to analyze business operations and improve productivity. The SAIT Centre for Innovative Information Technology Solutions will initially focus on using IT to streamline energy business processes and lay the groundwork to expand into health care and construction in the project’s second phase. The Centres will also be used to upgrade industry personnel skills.

IBM CENTRE AT U OF A

The agreement between the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) and the Univ of Alberta (U of A) will establish an IBM CAS focussing on machine intelligence, nanotechnology and biological simulation. AIS is contributing $450,000 to the CAS, with $810,000 in cash and in-kind coming from IBM and the U of A.

The U of A CAS is the first to be established in Western Canada and the third in Canada. The world’s first IBM CAS was established in Toronto in 1990 and has been replicated in centres such as Ottawa, Dublin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Boblingen (Germany), Boston, Raleigh NC, Hawthorne NY and Bangalore (India). The long term plan is to extend the program to other post-secondary institutions in the province and expand the areas of research. IBM’s global network of Centres give Alberta researchers the potential for interacting with researchers around the world.

The results of the research at U of A could be incorporated into products sold globally. And the creation of the CAS gives IBM researchers the opportunity to work with the province’s best students, academics and researchers with the view to identifying new and emerging technologies for further academic research.

HP DEAL COULD FLOURISH

The agreement with HP Labs (formerly Hewlett-Packard Laboratories) is not as advanced as those with Microsoft and IBM, but it is more wide ranging and involves a greater number of research institutions. The so-called master agreement establishes parameters for an exploratory period to determine which areas of collaboration hold the greatest potential for all parties. Institutions named in the agreement are: U of A, Univ of Calgary, Univ of Lethbridge, Univ of Athabasca and The Banff Centre.

A side agreement between HP Labs and The Banff Centre offers the most specific potential. The memorandum of understanding may lead to a formal two-year research collaboration between HP Labs and Banff’s New Media Institute (NMI). HP has already agreed to research content and applications at the NMI for its various mobile digital devices. Other areas of potential collaboration include mobile gaming devices for outdoor recreation, personalized and customized television, and mobile, wearable and fixed sensors for use in gaming, learning and “healthy lifestyles” environments.

HP Lab’s decision to explore new opportunities in the province follows its signing last year of a multi-year support agreement for the Univ of Calgary’s Grid Computing Research Centre. The Centre has launched two prototype research projects including the Model Driven Open Data Collection Framework project in which HP is involved. It entails experimenting with various data collection methods to determine how information from different tools should be combined. The data used during the project will be made available to HP researchers as required. An HP delegation is expected to tour research institutions in the province this spring to identify areas for future collaboration.

FOLK MUSIC ARCHIVE

The final agreement stemming from the California missions is with Sun Microsystems and entitled MuDoc. The collaboration between Sun and the U of A will begin with a collection of Folkways Records recordings donated to the university by the Smithsonian Institution. The collection will be digitized and a web-based search tool will be developed using a Sun storage system and web database architecture.

Another corporate collaboration on the horizon is with Varian Inc, Palo Alto CA, a manufacturer of magnetic resonance imaging equipment. An initial relationship with the Univ of Calgary has already been established and Doerksen says work is continuing to move towards a defined program and set of projects.

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