Wavefront Partners with BCNET to Help Wireless Startups Commercialise Innovation

By Andrea Wahbe on Jun 1, 2012 / Categories: CDMN News, Featured

On Wednesday, CDMN node Wavefront, a BC-based national commercialisation centre supporting the growth of Canada’s wireless companies, announced a partnership with BCNET, a shared IT services organisation dedicated to higher education and research in British Columbia. Together, they will bridge low-cost networks and enable technology collaboration between industry and academia to accelerate the commercialisation of wireless innovation.

Linking to BCNET’s Exchange provides wireless startup organisations at Wavefront with a competitive advantage by providing unlimited bandwidth for transmitting data freely and efficiently with Vancouver’s research universities and institutes by bypassing commercial network service providers. Wavefront connects to BCNET’s high-speed, high-capacity network through its Vancouver Transit Exchange, a network services exchange that directly interconnects Wavefront through a central router to over 35 research universities and institutes in Vancouver

“Our Exchange offers leading-edge technology that is designed to optimise data traffic for our higher education members, as well as foster community and economic development,” says Michael Hrybyk, president and CEO, BCNET.

Wavefront also received funding through CANARIE‘s Digital Accelerator for Research and Innovation (DAIR) program, to provision a direct fibre optic network connection between Wavefront’s facilities and the BCNET Transit Exchange located at Harbour Centre in Vancouver. The Exchange reduces network costs through peering connections and provides low-cost access to nine commercial Internet service providers.

FusionPipe, a startup in Wavefront’s accelerator program, uses BCNET’s high-speed research network for testing and validating their software and setting up a hybrid cloud. They used an advanced network-testing environment to conduct and prototype their research and collaborate with researchers at SFU. Their core product, ThoriumCloud, provides virtual desktops and secures Intranet access for tablets and smartphones.

“The high-speed network provides a direct link to transmit large amounts of data to SFU Burnaby where researchers were developing and testing cloud-based disaster recovery solutions using our technology. We’re in the early days of our collaboration project with SFU that is building on the advancements of cloud computing and network virtualisation. This project will put us at the centre of the future of cloud-computing – a pretty cool place to be,” says Peter Luong, Fusion Pipe’s CEO.

“Wavefront and BCNET’s partnership provides a robust cloud-based development environment for FusionPipe’s technology, speeding up their commercialisation – which is what we’re here to do,” said Alan Swain, VP Technology and Operations at Wavefront.