Users of CANARIE's DAIR Program deliver winning pitches

CANARIE was a national partner in the 2014 Funding Roadshow, in which 20 entrepreneurs at each of eleven events in eleven cities pitched their businesses to a panel of private investors and public funders. The objective of the Roadshow is to better educate entrepreneurs and facilitate connections with investors and funders. CANARIE participated as a member of the evaluation panel, and also provided a package of cloud computing services, via its DAIR (Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research) cloud offering, to the winning entrepreneurs. DAIR provides free cloud-based compute, network and storage resources for entrepreneurs and small businesses to develop, test, prototype and demonstrate next-generation products.

CANARIE is particularly pleased that two of the winners, Curatio from Vancouver, and SavvyDox from Ottawa, are from the rapidly-growing DAIR community. DAIR provided them with the opportunity to advance their solution, gain valuable market feedback and prepare their company for the next step in commercialization. Currently over 250 Canadian companies are benefitting from DAIR’s powerful cloud services.

“We are honoured to be part of the winning cohort of the Funding Roadshow, and thankful for the support of CANARIE’s DAIR program during our product development and validation phase,” says Hans Downer, President of SavvyDox. “As we offer a mobile document management and collaboration platform, cloud technologies are critical to both ongoing product development and testing and to seamless delivery of the product to our global client base.”

“The Funding Roadshow was a tremendous experience and showed how robust and innovative Canada’s entrepreneurial community is,” says Peter Wilenius, Vice President, Business Development at CANARIE. “Many of these companies are developing leading-edge technology solutions that are indicative of the ingenuity and prospects for Canada’s ICT sector. CANARIE’s DAIR cloud service helps tomorrow’s growth companies enhance market readiness by enabling cost-effective product testing on a global scale, key to launching products in a worldwide market.”

“We are proud to see participation in the Funding Roadshow grow year-over-year,” says Mike Lee, President, Fundica. “Additionally, the caliber of participating entrepreneurs is also on the rise. In particular, the presence of software-as-a-service (SAAS) companies, using cloud technologies, shows that Canadian entrepreneurs have recognized how the cloud can cost-effectively accelerate product development and support a global market strategy.”

Winners from across the country include:

Halifax – Eyeread – Eyeread (http://eyeread.co) is an educational eye-tracking tool that helps children read in their normal environment without supervision, while allowing educators to measure and track children’s progress through effective and detailed analytics.

Edmonton – Orpyx Medical Technologies – Orpyx Medical Technologies (www.orpyx.com) has developed a wearable disease management technology that addresses the growing demand for self-monitoring devices to better manage chronic medical conditions.

Victoria – Flytographer – Flytographer (www.flytogrpher.com) is the world’s first site to connect travelers with local professional photographers in over 33 cities worldwide for beautiful, modern, photojournalistic-style vacation photos.

Winnipeg – Advolve Media – Advolve Media’s (www.advolvemedia.com) first product line is digital network of its mirage advertising mirrors, in which content is triggered upon a user’s approach to the mirror, which are located in high-traffic areas.

Ottawa – SavvyDox – SavvyDox (www.savvydox.com) provides the technology platform that enables parallel document collaboration, facilitating the same synergistic results as a face-to-face meeting and providing an attractive alternative to Word Track Changes.

Guelph/Waterloo – Fr8nex – Fr8nex (www.fr8nex.com) is an SaaS tool for shippers to solve their biggest transportation challenges: better freight rates, stronger communication, and understanding key logistics.

Calgary – Sponsor Energy – Sponsor Energy (www.sponsorenergy.com) is an energy retailer that sells electricity and natural gas to socially conscious consumers in an increasingly deregulated energy market.

Montreal – ReturnMe – ReturnMe (www.return.me) is the world’s largest lost and found company. ReturnMe uses recovery tags to identify, track, and return lost and stolen items to their rightful owners.

Vancouver – Curatio – Curatio (www.curatio.me) is a mobile health company that connects patients living with the same disease and gives them a private community of peers and easy-to-use tools that help track, simplify and manage recovery and disease – all from the palm of their hands.

Mississauga/Toronto – OtoSim – OtoSim (www.otosim.com) develops ear and eye examination simulation and training tools – a learning bridge between books and real patients.

Montreal (West) – Zafea – (www.zafea.com) provides a low cost, simple home automation solution available for broad consumer adoption. The modular solution is built on an open infrastructure available for third party apps and devices. Free and simple home energy saving services are built in the core platform and offer consumers an immediate benefit and quick payback on investment.

DAIR’s free cloud resources are also available to any small or medium-sized Canadian business through the CANARIE website at http://atir-dair.canarie.ca.

About CANARIE

CANARIE designs and delivers digital infrastructure, and drives its adoption for Canada’s research, education and innovation communities. CANARIE keeps Canada at the forefront of digital research and innovation, fundamental to a vibrant digital economy.

CANARIE’s roots are in advanced networking, and CANARIE continues to evolve the national ultra-high-speed backbone network that enables data-intensive, leading-edge research and big science across Canada and around the world. One million researchers, scientists and students at over 1,100 Canadian institutions, including universities, colleges, research institutes, hospitals, and government laboratories have access to the CANARIE Network.

CANARIE also leads the development of research software tools that enable researchers to more quickly and easily access research data, tools, and peers. In support of Canada’s high-tech entrepreneurs, CANARIE offers cloud-computing services to help them accelerate product development and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Twelve provincial and territorial network partners, together with CANARIE, collectively form Canada’s National Research and Education Network (NREN). This powerful digital infrastructure connects Canadians to national and global data, tools, colleagues, and classrooms that fuel the engine of innovation in today’s digital economy.

Established in 1993, CANARIE is a non-profit corporation, with the major investment in its programs and activities provided by the Government of Canada.