About CENGN

Mission and Vision

CENGN, an NCE (Networks of Centres of Excellence) funded CECR (Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research), works with small and medium-sized businesses, multinationals, the government, and academia to strengthen Canada’s leadership in Next Generation Networking (NGN). This Centre of Excellence strives to create an ecosystem that accelerates the growth of the Canadian Information and Communications Technology sector.

CENGN is a consortium of its member organizations, including: Cisco, EXFO, Fujitsu, GENBAND, Invest Ottawa, Juniper, Mitel, Nokia, Rogers, TELUS, Wind River, and Zayo. These competing organizations come together, putting aside their rivalry, and instead cooperate in CENGN’s vision to support commercialization in Canada – we call this: co-opetition. The goal of CENGN is to strategically fill the gaps identified in the Canadian telecommunications commercialization ecosystem – to ensure that Canadian small and medium enterprises (SMEs), start-ups and researchers have access to industry guidance/knowledge and a multi-vendor open-platform for validation of their technologies and services.

This support is critical to SMEs looking to migrate innovation from the research phase to commercialization.
No single consortium partner can deliver the functionality of CENGN. The strength and uniqueness of our approach comes from a combined contribution of CENGN’s talented team and its members, who contribute their expertise and equipment to lower the barrier to entry for Canadian SMEs.

Members & Partners Board of Directors

Testimonials

Kim Devooght Vice President, Public Sector, Cisco Canada

For the first time the world leaders in Network equipment are coming together to establish a multi-vendor virtualization platform to accelerate and foster new innovation. The platform will provide SMEs and researchers the ability to validate and test products and advanced applications such as healthcare and facilitate opportunities for growth for Cisco in Canada.

Kimberly Matheson,Vice-President (Research and International), Carleton University

CENGN will create a space where ideas can grow from focused research that will launch into new business and/ or products and in turn will stimulate economic growth and prosperity.

Dr. Robert Keys, CTO

Canada is an epicenter for networking research and innovation. Another demonstrable proof point of that, the CENGN represents a critical milestone in the evolution of Software Defined Networking (SDN). BTI Systems, in collaboration with other coalition companies, is committed to furthering SDN development, testing and interoperability, so that organizations from both the public and private sectors can benefit from the advance of next-generation architecture technologies that are revolutionizing the design of cloud and data center connectivity.

Brian Hepburn, CEO, Empowered Networks

The CENGN consortium offers something that is not available elsewhere. This is not an academic exercise. It’s a deliberately commercial approach to building leading Canadian companies, and we are very proud of our CENGN partnership.

Germain Lamonde, Chairman, Founder and CEO, EXFO Inc.

CENGN will help EXFO build relationships with partners, SMEs and customers that in turn will provide us with the success that will help us continue to build high value jobs in Canadian cities.

Igor Bergman, Vice President and Head of the Software Business Unit, Fujitsu

Fujitsu is thrilled to be partnering with CENGN to accelerate SDN and NFV commercialization.

Mathieu Lemay, CEO, Inocybe Technologies

Canada’s fate in the knowledge-based era rests on the nation’s ability to continuously improve its communications infrastructure and talent pool. CENGN is creating an ecosystem with the necessary knowledge to leapfrog Canada into a world leadership role in Next Generation Networks.

Chris Bachalo, CTO, Juniper Networks Canada

CENGN will create the opportunity to build relationships with partners, customers and developers in an environment that supports the commercialization of Software Defined Networking (SDN) applications/ platforms and interoperability between vendors bringing considerable benefits to the Canadian ICT industry through the commercialization of new technologies and application platforms.

Code Cubitt, Managing Director, Mistral Venture Partners

CENGN is a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to evaluate and validate their solutions on real world network hardware in partnership with Tier 1 equipment vendors and network operators- relationships that can be priceless for a start-up trying to get market acceptance. CENGN will result in significant competitive advantage for Canadian companies in the communications sector by facilitating quick & strong channels to market. CENGN will improve the quality of opportunities for investors such as Mistral.

Sam Bucci, Vice-President & General Manager of the Terrestrial Optics Product Unit, Nokia

CENGN will provide a much needed cluster of commercialization expertise to SMEs and researchers. This initiative is critical to ensuring that Canada is once again recognized as a leader in next generation intelligent networks. The opportunity to be a member of CENGN will provide Alcatel-Lucent Canada an opportunity to expand our innovation capabilities.

Ibrahim Gedeon, Chief Technology Officer, Telus

There is a burgeoning opportunity for the industry in Software Defined Networking (SDN), a major trend towards development of sophisticated software that links applications to underlying network infrastructure…building capacity in this area will benefit Canadian industry with global market potential.

Sylvain Charbonneau, Associate Vice-President Research, University of Ottawa

CENGN will facilitate new opportunities for our institution to build new relationships with major corporations and start-ups-relationships that will lead to increased technology transfer and accelerated levels of commercialization.

Michael McCallen, Director/GM Ethernet Assurance, Viavi

Bridging the gap between innovation, research and commercialization is important to ensure that Canada is competitive and an international recognized centre in next generation networks. I personally believe that this type of commercialization initiative is a key to ensuring that companies like JDSU can retain and grow our Canadian presence and attract new opportunities to their sites.

James Maynard, President and CEO, Wavefront

CENGN will complement the activities at Wavefront and ensure that all potential telecommunication companies and researchers have the tools and services to develop, validate and commercialize next generation networks technologies. The proposed activities of the CENGN will be an important step to re-establishing Canada’s position as a global leader in telecommunications and networking technologies.

All Testimonials

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