CANARIE, a non-profit, federal government-funded research corporation focused on digital and networking technologies, is partnering with the Association of University Research Parks (AURP) Canada to help small businesses in tech with commercializing their products.
AURP Canada represents 26 research and technology parks across Canada, which are home to about 1,400 businesses employing about 65,000 people in the information and communications technology industry. With this new partnership, these 1,400 businesses will get access to CANARIE’s Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR), giving them access to computing resources to develop, test, prototype, and demo new products. They can also take advantage of the accelerator’s cloud, which is based here in Canada and can help them cut back on their costs and scale their products.
According to CANARIE’s numbers, these businesses already generate $4.3 billion of Canada’s yearly gross domestic product – and giving them more support will help boost that number. The idea is to leverage AURP Canada’s ability to both incubate and commercialize these businesses’ products.
“Canadian research and technology parks are helping start-up companies and born-global export-ready companies get to market,” said Carol Stewart, president of AURP Canada, in a statement.
“In today’s competitive economy, our companies need support services offered through parks that will allow them to accelerate this process. The partnership with CANARIE and the Powered by DAIR program will fill a gap for our companies and build a stronger national ecosystem.”
The CANARIE – AURP Canada partnership isn’t the only one to take advantage of what DAIR offers. Aside from AURP Canada, a number of incubators and accelerators across the country are using the digital accelerator’s cloud resources, like Go Fred in the City of Fredericton, Startup Calgary, TEC Edmonton, Accelerator YYC, and the ICT Association of Manitoba. A number of colleges are also using DAIR, including Algonquin College in Ottawa.