New business ecosystem launched to help companies commercialize the next generation of information and communication technology
Ottawa, May 21, 2009. Peter Carbone, Chair of the Board of Coral CEA, and Tony Bailetti, Director of the Ontario Talent First Network, today announced the launch of a new business ecosystem designed to assist companies to commercialize communications enabled applications (CEA). These applications marry the network capabilities and intelligence found in today's networks with the rich world of IT applications to create entirely new user experiences. The Coral CEA ecosystem is anchored around a non-profit organization with five founding members: IBM, Nortel, Carleton University, Eclipse Foundation and The IT Association of Canada. Communication enabled applications represent the next generation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Ottawa, May 21, 2009. Peter Carbone, Chair of the Board of Coral CEA, and Tony Bailetti, Director of the Ontario Talent First Network, today announced the launch of a new business ecosystem designed to assist companies to commercialize communications enabled applications (CEA). These applications marry the network capabilities and intelligence found in today's networks with the rich world of IT applications to create entirely new user experiences. The Coral CEA ecosystem is anchored around a non-profit organization with five founding members: IBM, Nortel, Carleton University, Eclipse Foundation and The IT Association of Canada. Communication enabled applications represent the next generation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Coral CEA is an important initiative. It addresses the significant challenges companies have today competing globally. Coral CEA addresses the entire life cycle of a business, providing access to differentiating technology building blocks, specialized talent, and member company capabilities. It goes beyond the incubator capability by providing its members with a powerful new way to collaborate, co-create and compete on a global scale. Members are encouraged to actively participate in the ecosystem, partnering to address opportunities, and contributing to enhance the ecosystem capability.
“Today companies compete on the effectiveness of their business processes. The Coral CEA business ecosystem is anchored around the ability to embed advanced telecom capabilities into these business processes driving significant productivity improvements," said Peter Carbone. “The ecosystem has world class technology assets that will be made available to members to help them differentiate and compete. The proven, collaborative business model provides a compelling value proposition to its members.”
CORAL CEA
IBM and Nortel are contributing almost $15 million of technology and expertise, making it easy to leverage ICT to deliver new, competitive solutions. " We see Coral CEA's ecosystem strategy as a very valuable complement to IBM's capability. The innovation it will stimulate will create companies that we can partner with to address a wider range of opportunities than we can address on our own" says Rob White, Integration Executive - Cognos and Director, IBM Ottawa Software Lab.
Carleton University will create knowledge assets and build the capacity of skilled knowledge workers familiar with both ecosystem commercialization and communications enabled applications.” The leadership being shown by Coral CEA is addressing one of the greatest challenges we face in Canada, that of linking innovation to commercialization. Carleton greatly values this opportunity to fully support the goals of growing companies and knowledge based talent” say Dr Kim Matheson, Vice President Research and International at Carleton University. The Eclipse Foundation (upon which Coral CEA is modeled) is contributing knowledge on how to build a healthy, global ecosystem. The IT Association of Canada will be helping to scale the impact of Coral CEA to a national level.
“Small and large technology companies in Ontario have been left to survive the economic downturn alone, a situation we can no longer tolerate. As in nature, working together improves the odds of survival and dominance,” said Tony Bailetti. He added “Coral CEA will enable massive innovation to be delivered quickly due to the unique partnering of small and medium size companies. For example, in the May session of the Lead to Win program we identified at least a dozen startups that can benefit from Coral CEA.”
Coral CEA is building the community and engaging with potential strategic members to further develop vertical markets for CEAs, extend the technology base of building blocks, and bring forward challenges for ecosystem members to address. It is also inviting individuals to contribute to the sandbox. "Coral CEA represents a new approach of doing business in Canada," said Carbone. "This is the best and most effective approach to do business in today's global economy."
For more information:
www.coralcea.net
Tony Bailetti
Bailetti@sce.carleton.ca
613-829-8885 613-520-2600, extension 8398
Peter Carbone
pjcarbone@gmail.com