Old friends’ chat leads to big deal

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This article was published 16/01/2010 (5828 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two old schoolmates catching up over a beer in New York led to a deal unveiled Friday that will bring IT giant Cisco Systems and its new video-conferencing technology to the University of Winnipeg.

The friends were Hartley Richardson, CEO of James Richardson & Sons Limited and Rob Lloyd, Cisco’s executive vice-president of worldwide operations. They went to university together in Winnipeg.

That conversation resulted in a joint federal-provincial $7-million deal with Ottawa and the province that will see the San Jose, Calif.-based multinational company bring its high-def TelePresence network to Manitoba.

It will also create 34 research and teaching labs at U of W’s Commercialization Research and Education Alliance for Science, Technology and the Environment at the university’s new $37.5-million science complex and its Richardson College for the Environment. The Richardson family donated $3.5 million to the project, set to open in the spring of 2011.

It’s also the first centre of its kind in Canada and will be aimed at developing new conferencing technology in partnership with Cisco.

Richardson said he and Lloyd were attending a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative and during a private moment talked about what they could do together to bring some of the ideas discussed to life.

"One of the key platforms talked about was sustainability in the environment," Richardson said. "Rob and I hadn’t caught up for a while. I was telling him things were happening in Winnipeg and that he should get back and learn about what we’re doing here. From that the idea just grew."

U of W president Lloyd Axworthy said while the centre, and Cisco’s involvement, will be at the university, the Internet-based technology being developed will be available to anyone. In Manitoba it will be used for distance education and for researchers to collaborate more closely across Canada.

Axworthy said a practical application could see Manitoba Hydro officials meeting face-to-face with staff at a northern dam project without anyone having to leave their offices.

The advantage is reduced costs of flying people to meetings or seminars and less impact on the environment caused by fuel-burning airliners.

"It’s almost a public utility," Axworthy said of the Cisco’s TelePresence network. It will initially link the U of W to the University of Brandon and the University College of the North in The Pas, but will be open to others to use. Cisco is donating two TelePresence virtual meeting systems to the U of W.

"The key to what we’re doing, and this is the, I think, exciting part for Winnipeg, is that we’re now the centre for innovation," he said. "It’s up to us to start developing the ideas and turning them into practices."

Cisco is also contributing a $2-million endowment to the U of W’s Cisco chair for collaborative technologies. Ottawa and the province are contributing matching funds toward the project.

"The University of Winnipeg is a world-class institution with world-class people," said Nitin Kawale, president of Cisco Canada. "We shared a vision in terms of how innovation and collaborative technologies can change a lot of things."

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca