GEARING UP FOR GROWTH
Auto advances set to boost tech sector
It was a sunny October afternoon when a gunmetal grey Lincoln MKZ drove itself down a roadtest circuit in Kanata. Mayor Jim Watson beamed from inside the car, waving at the throng of onlookers who’d gathered on either side of the road to watch what was touted as the first event of its kind in Canada.
The self-driving car — equipped with BlackBerry QNX software designed in Ottawa — is no mere hunk of metal. It’s the culmination of years of innovation and effort, a source of futuristic inspiration for Ottawa.
It’s also the subject of this instalment of The IT Factor, the Citizen’s five-part series on the ambitions and realities of the city ’s tech sector.
In a city with so many competing interests and sectors — government, telecom, software as a service, security, energy and so on — autonomous vehicles could serve as a valuable rallying point to move Ottawa tech onto a bigger stage.
“I think the next wave of technology will be autonomous vehicle industry,” says Watson. “We’re working very hard to become one of the centres of excellence in the province for autonomous vehicles.”
“That’s one of the waves of the future we’re trying to ride,” he continues, noting Ottawa’s mass of technical expertise.
As we explored in previous instalments of The IT Factor, Ottawa’s tech sector has long struggled to get out from under the shadow of the public service as well as its tech neighbours, Montreal and Toronto. However, neither of those two cities have a pronounced reputation for autonomous vehicle innovation, which means Ottawa could readily take up the cause.
“Companies like Google and Uber and Tesla have really forced the hand of the traditional carmaker to push forward more quickly on new architecture for the software,” says John Wall, senior vice-president and head of BlackBerry QNX.
What’s become clear over the past few years, he continues, is that the electronic architecture of the traditional car is old: “It needs a refresh, and autonomous drive is one of the things that’s pushing it.”
It’s almost a metaphor for Ottawa itself, which is angling hard to become Canada’s ground zero for autonomous vehicle innovation as a way to renovate its broader image. And the industry certainly helped spark a revitalization of the Kanata North tech park, injecting it with new energy.
Late last year, BlackBerry QNX announced the creation of its Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Centre at its Kanata HQ, designed to breed collaboration between public and private partners. It’s the perfect venue for such a feat: The neighbouring telecoms, the presence of CENGN — itself a consortium of companies innovating next-generation networks — as well as a few dozen smaller companies working on security, sensors and other internal components are key to Ottawa’s successful pursuit of an autonomous-vehicle cluster and a centre of excellence designation.
Ford Motor Company is also establishing a presence in Kanata as part of its young partnership with BlackBerry QNX; several hundred of the latter’s employees were reassigned to Ford to ramp up the automaker’s autonomous drive ambitions.
Then, of course, there’s Apple. The monolithic company’s cloakand-dagger presence in Kanata — confirmed by multiple people interviewed for this series — is the kind of known secret that sends shocks up and down Ottawa’s spine. Knowing Apple is here, reportedly working on autonomous-drive technology, is extremely exciting and puts a spring in the step of the people who genuinely thrive on the idea of Ottawa’s prolonged success.
Ottawa’s got a real shot at taking the lead on Canada’s autonomous-vehicle industry.
BlackBerry QNX already has a 60 per cent market share in telematics and infotainment software, and the company — a marriage between the famed cellphone maker and an early-1980s embedded-software firm — has gone all-in on the automotive business.
To complete the portrait of autonomous drive requires the help of other tech companies — for instance, Neptec’s sensors and Irdeto’s security software. These firms enable safety features that in the future will be in most cars, including human-steered ones. BlackBerry QNX’s Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Centre was built to allow this kind of collaboration.
The evolution and success of autonomous drive rests heavily on the next-generation networks that will power the coming influx of connected devices, not least of which are cars. In that, autonomous vehicles and next-generation networks can be seen as two peas in a single pod — wholly formed entities growing side-byside, encased in Ottawa’s shell.
“Why are next-generation networks (NGN) important? Because everything is connected,” says Ritch Dusome, president and CEO of the Centre of Excellence in Next-Generation Networks (CENGN). “NGN enables all the autonomous vehicle stuff to happen. It’s the underlayer to all these sexy solutions.”
Across Canada and around the world, the internet of things — essentially, embedding connectivity and sensors into even the most mundane household items, such as light bulbs and doorbells — is slowly gaining ground. Autonomous drive is the next frontier.
However, in order to be truly connected and “autonomous,” a new, more expansive wireless network is required that ensures a stable connection between the vehicles and the city infrastructure around them — even in more remote parts of the country that don’t currently have reliable broadband cellular network access.
“They’re just assuming in that industry that the (network) infrastructure will be there,” says Dusome of the autonomous-vehicle industry. “So it better be there!”
Although this city’s tech sector is prolific and incredibly valuable, producing amazing technology used in some of the world’s most sophisticated machines, the business-to-business and industrial nature of its innovation makes it difficult for average consumers to notice or care. This general lack of awareness is a major stumbling block when trying to market Ottawa as a tech destination, especially in a consumer-driven tech market.
That said, autonomous vehicles are a hot topic right now, with multiple firms racing in a heat to make the first, and best, commercially available self-driving car. And because of the consumer-oriented nature of the auto industry, this kind of innovation has piqued the interest of even the most tech-unsavvy people. That interest could, down the road, attract more investors, partners and innovators, in turn feeding Ottawa’s tech ecosystem organically.
Ottawa is extremely hungry for national and international recognition of its tech sector, and autonomous vehicle innovation is setting the table for that. The IT Factor concludes next week.