Cisco Systems Canada Co. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Bell Business Solutions (TSX: BCE) will develop and deliver a range of IP-based managed services to Canadian businesses, including unified communications, voice, wireless, IP contact and security.
The move towards managed services builds on the companies’ commitment to provide customers with IP technologies and services “without the need for onsite support or intensive capital investment,” said Terry Walsh, president and CEO of Cisco.
“Integrated dial-up voice and video networks have come of age and the productivity benefits of these technologies to businesses large and small have become very significant,” he added.
According to Boston, Mass.-based research firm Ovum, the managed services market in Canada will grow more than 60 per cent in the next two years, from $1.2 billion to $1.95 billion in 2009.
Bell and Cisco also announced the creation of two knowledge centres, in Toronto and Montréal, to train and nurture the “next generation of IT engineers, managers and leaders.” The knowledge centres will focus on skills certification on Cisco technology. It’s a “brick and mortar investment” that should help close the IT skills divide plaguing the Canadian technology industry, said Stéphane Boisvert, president of the enterprise group with Bell.
In January, the two companies also announced the formation of the Canadian Coalition for IT Succession to address the economic impact of IT skills shortages.
The centres will open in the second and third quarters of 2008, possibly with future plans for centres in Ottawa and Québec City.
Joint customers of the two firms include Concordia University, which recently became the first academic institution in Canada to deploy an 802.11n network. The project was an effort to expand its campus-wide wireless network to meet the mobility needs of the community, said president Michael DiGrappa.
Rolled out this past winter, the network is part of a “larger, innovative indoor-outdoor wireless mobility infrastructure” designed to help meet the needs of 44,000 students and 3,000 faculty and staff, which DiGrappa described as a “daunting task.”
The 802.11n wireless technology, part of Cisco System’s Unified Wireless Network, should provide improved reliability and faster throughput for existing 802.11g implementations.
The move is designed to better allow the university to maintain a “link” with students and faculty in light of increased demands for innovative technologies, said DiGrappa, in particular as technological innovation has led to new ways to teach. “It amounts to an on going technological evolution,” he said.
The past decade, he said, has seen a rapid growth in the student population at Concordia, in turn resulting in a rapid expansion of the network and a “surge in connectivity needs.” The university had responded by working with Bell Canada and Cisco to deploy Cisco IP phones, and later transition to VoIP, which DiGrappa said is now “a reality of campus life and is providing a platform to continue to add new and exciting features.”
“Education isn’t what it used to be… it’s a very fluid environment,” said Andrew McAusland, associate vice-president of instruction and information technology services at Concordia. He added that VoIP has allowed the university to add an increasing number of services to its annually changing client base of 12,000 new students.
