Technology services and consulting company Wipro Limited Canada yesterday opened its newest Wipro-AWS Launch Pad Centre in Toronto, which the company said will allow its clients to experience the “art of the possible” in digital transformation.
The centre, similar to locations in Bangalore, where Wipro, which operates in 66 countries, is headquartered, Sydney, and Sao Paulo, will see Wipro and AWS Canada personnel work with clients in the areas of application and database migration, application modernization, serverless computing, purpose-built databases, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).
Kim Watson, country head and managing director of the company’s Canadian subsidiary, said the facility will “help meet customers’ needs for increased speed and agility while achieving cost optimization.
“The local expertise from Wipro and AWS will help (them) tap into the power of cloud-based solutions and build resilient, future-proof businesses.”
The centre, which is located on the 50th floor of First Canadian Place in downtown Toronto, will, according to a release, see Wipro engineers, designers, and consultants located in Canada and elsewhere work with clients “to co-innovate, collaborate, develop and deliver” scalable cloud offerings.
In an interview with IT World Canada earlier this week, Watson said one of the key goals of the facility will be to not only cater to an organization’s IT side, but also bring in non-IT senior executives such as chief executive officers (CEOs) or chief marketing officers (CMOs) to experience what is possible.
“The key thing is really understanding what that business outcome looks like to that leader – having them articulate it,” she said. “That definition feeds everything else in the process. I have seen us take an incredible amount of time, just trying to dissect what does that mean? That’s the most important piece.”
The non-IT professional will also approach a cloud project differently, she added. “They want to do reference calls, they want to talk to other (firms) in different industries because that is how they are going to get the innovation jump. IT itself is kind of the same across the board. The business outcomes are when it gets really exciting, and having both (IT and non-IT executives) at the table is huge.”
Among the organizations that will be involved is the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA). Wipro, a member of the AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) and Well-Architected Partner programs, initiated a new system during the height of the pandemic at Pearson Airport, in conjunction with AWS, called the Passenger Queue System (PQS).
Known as the “Boarding Gate of the Future,” an AWS partner blog published in late 2021 states that the goal of the project was to “deliver a seamless and enhanced passenger experience while meeting social distancing requirements and improving overall safety.
“Wipro leveraged its Wipro FullStride Cloud Services to develop PQS. The solution alleviates passenger congestion, enables compliance of social distancing standards at boarding gates, and affords more freedom for passengers to dine and shop prior to the boarding process.”
Michael Brown, director of IT programs and strategy with the authority, said the co-innovation hub will allow the GTAA to collaborate with AWS and Wipro to deliver offerings targeted at improving the overall customer experience.
Eric Gales, managing director of AWS Canada, said that in today’s digital economy, “more companies are moving to the cloud for greater speed, agility and innovation. The Wipro-AWS Launch Pad will demonstrate the truly innovative experiences that can be developed on AWS, helping companies bring to life their solutions and accelerate their journey to the cloud.”