BCNET & HPCS Community to Connect, Compute and Collaborate in Vancouver, May 1-3, 2012

BCNET: British Columbia’s Shared IT Services Organization for Research, Higher Ed and Regional CANARIE Partner

How often would 500 of Canada’s higher education computing and IT experts come together in a forum to discuss the latest innovations and developments in technology? We are making it happen on May 1st, as we kick off our 11th annual BCNET Conference, bringing together a national community of experts in high-performance computing, high-profile members of the Canadian research community, IT professionals in higher education, high-tech and telecommunications industry professionals and Canadian and American advanced research network organizations.

This year we are joining forces with Compute Canada and WestGrid to host a national technology conference for research and higher education at Simon Fraser University’s Harbour Centre campus in downtown Vancouver. The joint event will deliver a rich array of content, offer experiences of professional development and plenty of networking opportunities.

Our Conference venue and hotel vacancies are filling up fast, so don’t miss your chance to interact with Canada’s technology experts! Register today on our Conference page and begin planning which sessions you want to attend!

Content-Rich, Interactive Sessions

Member-focused and member-driven, our conference program serves up the hottest IT topics that are designed to be interactive to peak your learning experience. Our community of IT working groups and committees have devised a content-rich schedule, covering a host of topics from privacy, security, social media and mobility to cloud computing and desktop collaboration tools.

Furthermore, we plan on highlighting how BCNET’s expanded mandate of shared IT services for higher education and research assists B.C’s research universities and institutes to reduce costs and support their strategic objectives. Our high-speed, high-capacity advanced network is the digital highway that transmits data and services amongst campuses. If you’re interested in acquiring a better understanding of how a shared IT services platform can impact an institution‘s mission and vision, this is one session you definitely don’t want to miss.

HPC & Data Management

Our HPCS partners will share the latest tools, techniques and advancements in computational research and data management. These sessions will range from case studies to panel discussions that aim to explore a variety of high-performance computing issues such as the sustainability of data centres, the security measures and privacy policies around big data, and the role of big data in the medical field.

Keynotes On Our Future

Hear from Leonard Brody, a business and technology visionary, described as “a controversial leader of the new world order.” Brody is a highly respected entrepreneur, venture capitalist, bestselling author and a two-time Emmy nominated media visionary who has been through one of the largest internet IPOs in history.

Our second keynote, Dr. Michael Wesch, is a cultural anthropologist known as “The Explainer” exploring the effects of new media on society and culture.

Rounding out our trifecta of keynote speakers is John Towns, the NCSA Director of the Distributed Cyber infrastructure Program Office, who will be illustrating the importance of advanced computing and data resources by presenting a number of computational science and engineering research projects.

Come to Vancouver to Learn, Share and Connect

Whether it’s from the real-life campus case studies or the hands-on pre-conference workshops, everyone attending the 2012 BCNET & HPCS Conference will gain valuable insight on the research and higher education community’s innovative IT and computing solutions.

The national scope of our event will allow you to network with not just professional colleagues but also industry experts from all over the country through speaking tracks and industry showcases.

Needless to say, our concept of a jointly hosted Conference between BCNET and HPCS stays true to the idea of partnership and collaboration, a spirit that is inevitably necessary to advance research and higher education into the future.

Innovating our policies along with our practices

Richard Hawkins speaking on innovation policy at the Tech Futures Summit.

An interesting conversation was happening today at the Alberta Innovates Technology Futures Summit. Richard Hawkins, University of Calgary Professor and Canada Research Chair in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, presented on how to determine whether or not innovation policies are working.

He talked about how one of the challenges faced by government-sponsored innovation programs is to demonstrate impact from public investment, especially in the short to medium term. Unfortunately, that is not always enough time to collect conclusive data or tangible results.

According to Hawkins, the solution to this un-complementary fit is to re-calibrate performance expectations and broaden our measurements. These days, we should be looking at program impacts on multiple and different parts of the innovation system, including the social and economic sectors.

Also, developing more technology should be a means, not an end, he said. “There is no shortage of technology, but there is a shortage of innovation,” Hawkins said. Policies that focus on simply producing technology rather than deploying it are missing the point.

So, shifting our perspective from technology as the innovation to technology as the conduit (or “platform”, to give a pointed nod to CANARIE’s Network-Enabled Platforms Program as an example), we see that innovation and the resulting impacts are then driven by who uses the technology, what they use it for, and how that changes what they were doing before.

As innovation is built around change and disruption, it makes sense that our policies and policy-building approaches should evolve in response. Measuring short-term impacts will always be a challenge, but if we change what we’re looking at and where we’re looking for it, that can help uncover new measures of success.

What are your thoughts? Do current metrics accurately measure innovation impacts? If not, how should policies change? Please leave your comments below.

Canada needs to seize the green energy opportunity

The world’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector is in need of a green energy provider, and, according to Mohamed Cheriet, spokesperson for the GreenStar Network (GSN) project, that’s where Canada has the potential to make its mark.

Cheriet, a Professor in the Department of Synchromedia at the École de technologie supérieure in Montreal, gave an overview of the GSN project at the CANARIE Annual General Meeting (AGM) held on Tuesday, June 21. The virtual AGM was videoconferenced across four sites using CANARIE’s advanced network and the GSN. Cybera’s Calgary facility was one of the broadcast locations, joining Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver.

Cheriet showed a map plotting 2,000 datacentres in the world. Of those, he said that half are based in the United States (US), 57 in Canada, and the rest are spread around the world. These centres are one of the ICT sector’s largest energy consumers. As more and more research organizations, institutions and businesses of all sizes turn to cloud, virtualization and remote storage as data solutions, the reliance on ICT — and the amount of greenhouse gases this sector produces — is expected to grow. Currently, Cheriet noted, the ICT industry in the US accounts for 8% of its national power consumption. The carbon dioxide produced from that energy consumption is growing by at least 6% per year.

This is where Canada and the GSN come in.

The Calgary-based GreenStar Network node is operated by Cybera and powered by eight solar panels located on the roof of the Alastair Ross Technology Centre.

As we’ve already noted in past blogs, the GSN project draws renewable energy from five nodes across Canada. Cybera is a local partner in the project, operating the Calgary solar-powered node located on the roof of the Alastair Ross Technology Centre (pictured at right). With a global reach in mind, the GSN project has expanded overseas to host nodes in Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Iceland, and Spain. A Memorandum of Understanding has also been signed with partners in China, and one with Egypt is in the works.

Cheriet says Canada offers unique advantages which make it an ideal green energy producer. The country’s expanding investment into hydro, wind and solar resources means energy can be provisioned at a low price. Access to high-speed optical network infrastructure (such as that provided by CANARIE) enables high-performance connections with major content providers, allowing for large-scale research projects and leading-edge network-enabled platforms. This has also set the stage for the GSN project to experiment with key areas of ICT operation and management technology, namely virtualization, cloud management, carbon monitoring and energy optimization. The next step, argues Cheriet, is to continue rallying and building government and industry support for adopting green IT and green energy platforms.

CANARIE, a major funder of the project, is on board with GSN’s vision.
“If we can become a leader in green IT, it creates economic advantages for all Canadians,” said Mark Roman, CANARIE President and CEO.

As CANARIE begins its mandate renewal process, the GSN is one of many funded projects that demonstrate CANARIE’s impact on advancing Canada’s digital economy strategy. Both Roman and Mark Whitmore, Chair of CANARIE’s Board of Directors, highlighted the following as priority areas for the organization’s mandate renewal:

• reach out to more Canadian users and enhance international collaborations
• incorporate emerging technologies such as cloud and wireless
• spearhead economic development and job creation

Strong collaborations remain a cornerstone to these plans, Whitmore noted, and CANARIE will continue to develop and support partnerships in Canada’s research, education and industry sectors.

So what does the upcoming year look like for you? Is green energy or some form of green IT on the horizon for your organization? Are you using Cybera’s or CANARIE’s advanced network for a project or pilot? We want to hear about it. Leave your comments below!

Live-blogging at Canada 3.0 – What does it take to “Be the Future”?

As Canada 3.0 starts to wrap up, it’s worth stepping back to reflect on its theme this year: “Be the Future”. These three little words pack a lot of weight. They act as a strong call to action to the Canada 3.0 participants and represent a mindset that inspires us to set our sights higher, our goals further and our activities more inclusive of our fellow innovators (because we’re not just talking about individual futures here, we’re talking about everyone’s future).

One of the morning security panel participants today answered a question with the caveat: “Technology has moved forward but we’re the same humans we were hundreds of years ago.” Hmmm…..really? Studies have shown that human behaviour, communication and interaction have come a long way. In fact, Leonard Brody, best-selling author, technology forecaster and business strategist, says that we are fundamentally different people than we were only a few years ago. Within a 10 year period, he says, from our ever-changing exposure to and engagement with technology and media, we as human beings have changed more than the institutions of govt, business and education that surround us. “The house doesn’t fit the people who live in it anymore,” he says. If what Brody says is true, that is going to add a weighty level of complexity to our new and inspirational mindset to “be the future.”

Luckily, one thing that hasn’t changed about the human race is its tenacity. This drive of ours to invent and advance our tools and processes is what has taken us this far. So it’s not technology alone that is changing the way we do business and perform research, it is the individual and community (both physical and virtual) behaviours that are enabling these changes.

The backchat happening in the #CDA30 Twitter feed is a prime example. Snippets from presenters’ sessions are being shared, deconstructed and commented on. This type of virtual conversation and collaboration is an example of how our expectations and applications of technologies have evolved and will continue to change as new tools are introduced. How many times have you heard someone say: “(X tool) would be so much better if it could just let me do (this)”. And somewhere, someone is likely responding: “Challenge accepted!”

In a sense, rather than saying humans have yet to catch up with today’s technologies, we may want look at it from the perspective of  technologies having finally caught up with the needs of today’s humans.

The projects and people we highlight in this blog are excellent examples of the trail blazers and supporters of what it takes to “be the future.” Ultimately, more technology education, community collaboration, and increased support for innovation will be what carries us even further. CANARIE and each of the provincial network organizations strive to build a supportive and foundational community for Canada’s innovators. What are your thoughts? What do you think is needed to “be the future”?

Dr. Alan Evans talks about GBRAIN (Global Brain Imaging Research Network)

Advanced networks and high performance computing are supporting a new frontier of brain research. Listen to what one of Canada’s most esteemed scientists has to say about digital innovation in health research…..the possibilities are infinite!

Picturing Data

Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Fascinating to watch!

NEPTUNE Canada Amasses Ten Terabits of Data and Images since its Launch

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Science magazine acknowledges NEPTUNE’s achievements as one of the major scientific breakthroughs for 2010

On December 08, 2009, real-time scientific data began to flow from NEPTUNE Canada, the world’s largest underwater observatory, to scientists around the world through Canada’s advanced network.

One year later, NEPTUNE Canada is generating massive volumes of data that is enabling oceanic science, research and discovery. Thanks to NEPTUNE, scientists around the world are collaborating and making important observations and discoveries about earth and ocean processes, climate change, commercial fish stocks and tectonic plate activity.

Enormous Amounts of Data Generated Daily

Every day, a vast amount of live data is generated from NEPTUNE Canada, the world’s largest cabled seafloor observatory located off the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. In fact, over 10 terabits of data have been accumulated since its launch, and nearly 7900 users have registered for NEPTUNE’s services.

The real-time data is amassed from over 250 complex science sensors and instruments that measure activity on the ocean floor. These sensors generate over 10 million scalar measurements, which are distributed to scientists and researchers across the province and around the world. Complex data sets are dispersed to researchers via BCNET’s provincial advanced network, which links to CANARIE’s national advanced network and 82 countries around the world.

The global observatory can also be accessed by schools and libraries through the Internet.

Global Recognition for NEPTUNE

One of its greatest accomplishments to date is the completion of the massive fibre optic infrastructure beneath the ocean floor off the west coast of Vancouver Island and the deployment of complex oceanic instruments and sensors that make use of the network.

These incredible accomplishments are being recognized in Science Magazine as one of the major scientific breakthroughs of 2011. As well, NEPTUNE collaborates with international partners including research scientists from Tongji University Shanghai, China, an Italian Ocean Technology Mission, industry partners from the West Coast and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

About NEPTUNE Canada

NEPTUNE Canada is building the world’s largest cabled seafloor observatory off the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The network, which extends across the Juan de Fuca plate, will gather live data from a rich constellation of instruments deployed in a broad spectrum of undersea environments. Data will be transmitted via high-speed fibre optic communications from the seafloor to an innovative data archival system at the University of Victoria. This system will provide free Internet access to an immense wealth of data, both live and archived throughout the life of this planned 25-year project.

Quick Post: CANARIE Newsletter // Bulletin de CANARIE

La version française suit.

First Brazil … then the world! Parabéns! (congratulations!), to the Science Studio team for beating other platforms from around the world to be chosen as the remote experiment-management platform for Brazil’s national synchrotron. Science Studio, led by researchers at the University of Western Ontario, is a CANARIE-funded Network-Enabled Platforms project. Science Studio is already in use at Canada’s national synchrotron facility, the Canadian Light Source, in Saskatoon. The Brazilian synchrotron will also deploy the underlying software used by the Canadian Light Source, and will continue to collaborate with Canadian researchers.Looks like Australia’s next … Read more »	Users’ Forum Participants: Your Message Was Heard! More than 80 passionate voices calling for an integrated Canadian digital infrastructure came together at the CANARIE Users’ Forum, held in Toronto in late November. Consensus on the need to move forward with a vision and a plan for implementing an integrated digital infrastructure in Canada was pervasive. One group described the movement to consensus as “viral.” The group clearly gave a mandate to CANARIE and its sister organization Compute Canada to proceed – and to do so quickly. Read more »	CANARIE helps tech firms soar with DAIR CANARIE’s Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research – DAIR – was recently launched as a research-and-development environment to support small and medium-sized companies in creating and demonstrating new, complex, large-scale products. The aim of the DAIR Program – initially a pilot program – is to significantly reduce the time required to develop and verify new products and ideas particularly in large scale. For small and medium-sized enterprises, this research and development environment removes the need to develop a sophisticated – and costly – product development and test environment, freeing up capital, space, power and people resources to focus on product innovation and testing. Read more »
More News: Disasters Are Unpredictable … Effective Disaster Response Isn’t The recent massive flooding in Australia shows how quick and effective response to disasters can literally mean the difference between life and death. Read more » Quick Riffs on a Fast Network Music students in Ottawa are taking their cue from world-renowned jazz masters through the National Arts Centre’s Manhattan on the Rideau program, which connects Canadian students to musician-mentors via live, high-quality videoconferencing powered by the CANARIE Network. Read more » R U Ready 4 IPv6? We R! IPv6 is the future standard for all network operations. Full IPv6 functionality supports global connectivity to digital leaders such as China, India and South Korea, and enables better performance when accessing IPv6 commercial content. Read more » » More news News we can use? Please forward newsworthy items, or feedback on the content or format of this newsletter, to Kathryn.Anthonisen@canarie.ca.
© CANARIE Inc. CANARIE Inc. | 45 O’Connor St., Suite 500 | Ottawa, ON | K1P 1A4 | 613-943-5454 | info@canarie.ca
D’abord le Brésil – ensuite le monde Parabéns (félicitations!) à l’équipe de Science Studio qui a battu les autres plateformes en lice de la planète et a été retenue pour l’expérience de gestion à distance du synchrotron brésilien. Science Studio est piloté par des chercheurs de l’Université Western Ontario et est financé dans le cadre du Programme de plateformes sur réseau de CANARIE. Le Centre canadien de rayonnement synchrotron (CCRS), à Saskatoon, utilise déjà Science Studio. Le synchrotron brésilien déploiera lui aussi le logiciel de la plateforme employée au CCRS et entend poursuivre sa collaboration avec les chercheurs canadiens. Plus sur le sujet »	Participants du Forum des utilisateurs : nous vous avons entendus! Plus de 80 voix se sont élevées avec feu pour que le Canada se dote d’une infrastructure numérique intégrée au Forum des utilisateurs de CANARIE, qui se déroulait à Toronto, en novembre dernier. Le consensus est général. Il faut aller de l’avant avec une vision et un plan qui procureront au pays une infrastructure numérique cohérente. Un groupe a qualifié ce mouvement consensuel de « viral ». Les participants ont clairement confié à CANARIE et à son pendant, Calcul Canada, le soin de passer à l’action sans attendre. Plus sur le sujet »	CANARIE aide les sociétés de haute technologie à prendre leur essor avec l’ATIR L’Accélérateur technologique pour l’innovation et la recherche (ATIR) récemment inauguré par CANARIE se veut un environnement de recherche et de développement qui aidera les petites et moyennes entreprises à créer, puis à faire la démonstration de nouveaux produits complexes à grande échelle. L’ATIR, qui devrait être opérationnel à la fin de mars 2011, intéressera aussi les chercheurs en TIC qui se penchent sur les technologies Internet de la prochaine génération. Plus sur le sujet »
Autres nouvelles Les cataclysmes sont imprévisibles, pas la façon de bien y réagir Les inondations catastrophiques survenues récemment en Australie montrent combien une réaction rapide et efficace peut littéralement faire la distinction entre la vie et la mort. Plus sur le sujet » Un réseau qui fait jazzer Les étudiants en musique d’Ottawa sont dirigés par des grands maîtres du jazz dans le cadre du programme Manhattan au canal Rideau du Centre national des arts qui les associe à des musiciens jouant le rôle de mentor, grâce à un système de vidéoconférence de haute qualité sur le réseau CANARIE. Ces ateliers uniques, proposés quatre fois l’an, constituent une extraordinaire expérience d’apprentissage pour les étudiants du monde entier et pour la faculté de jazz de la Manhattan School of Music. Plus sur le sujet » Prêts pour l’IPv6? Nous le sommes! L’IPv6 est la future norme qui s’appliquera à l’ensemble des opérations réseau. Une fonctionnalité IPv6 complète facilitera l’accès au contenu commercial utilisant l’IPv6 tel Google, et autorisera une connectivité globale avec les chefs de file du numérique comme la Chine, l’Inde et la Corée du Sud. Plus sur le sujet » » Autres nouvelles Vous avez du neuf? Faite parvenir les articles dignes d’intérêt ou vos commentaires sur le contenu ou la présentation de ce bulletin à Kathryn.Anthonisen@canarie.ca.
© CANARIE inc. CANARIE Inc. | 45, rue O’Connor, Bureau 500 | Ottawa (Ontario) | K1P 1A4 | 613-943-5454 | info@canarie.ca

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Promoting Canadian Digital Innovation

Contributor: Jim Ghadbane, CTO, CANARIE Inc.

Global economy? You bet… we’ve heard it so much, we’re almost numb to hearing it. Yet, losing sight of that reality puts countries in jeopardy of losing their competitive edge.  One doesn’t have to look too far to see that where Canada once led the world in communications products and services, we have started to lag considerably.

There are plenty of statistics to support the view that we are lagging in bringing good ideas to market on the world stage. The country needs a turnaround strategy! So, at CANARIE, we reached out to  stakeholders to develop a key component of that strategy.

First, we looked at what was happening elsewhere.  Many countries and regions were developing “innovation testbeds” to enable collaborative and exploratory research and pre-commercial testing. Could something like this be adapted to Canada and Canadian development?

When we asked stakeholders and potential users what they would need, and they were pretty clear:

• “cloud-based” computing where shared resources are provided on demand
• on-demand provisioning
• instant scalability
• wireless and virtual private network (VPN) access

They also told us that this kind of advanced digital infrastructure could help to shorten the product development process and allow them to deploy their human and financial resources more effectively.

We discovered that there is a strong appetite for this kind of advanced R & D environment in Canada. This environment is not only feasible by leveraging the CANARIE investment, but aligned perfectly with CANARIE’s mandate.

As a result, just before Christmas, CANARIE launched DAIR, the Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research program. What is it? It’s an R & D environment for small- and medium-sized enterprises for advanced research, product development and testing.

For companies that need network and computing capabilities that do not exist in a commercial environment today, like 4G wireless, DAIR is a critical enabler of innovation. For researchers needing an environment to build large scale proof-of-concept systems for next generation networks and computer platforms, DAIR offers an environment to experiment, to innovate, and to lead.

We hope to call for potential users of DAIR later this spring.

The big question now is the old Field of Dreams conundrum – if we build it, will they come?

Since Canada’s never had anything like this, product developers may not know where – or when – to start. Will they leap at our offer? Will they let someone else test the testbed?

We sure hope they’ll jump on board, as it fills a real gap in Canada’s ICT landscape. What do you think?

Related Links

To learn more about DAIR, check out http://www.canarie.ca/en/dair-program/about.

You may also be interested in the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) in the U.S or Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) and Pan-European Laboratory Infrastructure Implementation (PII) in the European Union.

Welcome to Digital Innovators

THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF CANADA’S ADVANCED NETWORK ALLIANCE

CANARIE, along with our provincial network partners, will add new content on a weekly basis, but encourage our partners to post more regularly. We want to make this a lively space for the community to discuss and debate issues affecting advanced networks and their users.

The primary goals of the advanced networks blog is to create a community of advanced network users, developers, visionaries and champions, together with an online space where they can share information and discuss issues affecting the community. Our audience is anyone with an interest in advanced networks – their future direction, uses, benefits, developments in Canada and internationally – that means you!