October 02, 2009

Deloitte Technology Fast 50 - Canadian Tech Leaders

October 02, 2009/ Jon Arnold

I've been following Deloitte Canada's Fast 50 listings for a few years, and it's a great barometer of success for our tech sector. The 2009 list was just published as the cover story in Backbone Magazine - you can read the full feature here - and you won't have to look far across Canada's PR landscape today for announcements from the companies that made the list.

Actually, there are a few lists, but the Fast 50 is the big one. It's my duty to wave the Canadian tech flag where I can, and I'd like to highlight companies from the list that I'm familiar with. Some are clients, and I'd love for the others to be clients, but let's keep the focus on them!

So, here they are in rank order from the Fast 50 list: Impact Mobile (5), BelAir Networks (10), Immersive Media (12), Sandvine (17), RIM (19), TelcoBridges (21), March Networks (24), BlueCat Networks (27), MyThum Interactive (39), and Sangoma (40). Congrats to all!

Also, wearing my Smart Grid hat, Toronto-based Ecobee made the Green 15 list. That's great news, and we've already posted a writeup about it to our portal.

You can review the lists via a separate link, which includes basic details about the companies as well as their percentage growth rates over the past 5 years. Many of the growth rates are astronomical - 4 figures and 2 with 5 figures - but that's to be expected from startups and smaller companies. However, you really have to tip your hat RIM, for continuing to rank so high, with a 910% 5 year growth rate. They're probably bigger than all the Fast 50 combined, and it says a lot about how a company of this size can sustain such fantastic growth year over year.

May 25, 2009

The Future of the Auto - Telecom Parallels

May 25, 2009/ Jon Arnold

This morning I attended an event put on by Ogilvy Renault and Deloitte, whose TMT practice I follow pretty regularly. The MaRS facility has become a good home for their events, and that's a topic unto itself. MaRS is a unique concept for an innovation center/business incubator, and there are all too few of these to support Canadian startups. Their focus is mostly life sciences, but they have a handful of tech clients, and as my ties develop there, you can expect to hear more about MaRS in future posts.

Today's breakfast session was about the future of the car, which is a hot topic for just about everyone these days. The focus was mainly around cleantech and energy, so I didn't go there expecting to hear about what's cool in GPS, wireless broadband, smartcar technologies, etc. That would have been nice, but the energy angle was still interesting. The panel had a mix of academics and real businesses - the latter being Magna and Zenn Motor Company (this sounds pretty neat actually - a Canadian public company making an electric car - but within Canada, it's only available in Quebec - huh?).

Anyhow, there was a lot of talk about the challenges for using hydrogen and fuel cells to power electric cars, and I couldn't help but notice the strong parallels to telecom, and what IP has done to displace/disrupt the PSTN. Just substitute carbon/oil for PSTN, and hydrogen/fuel cells for IP, and the conversation unfolds pretty much the same. Very interesting - I love being an outsider at these things - I don't think anyone else attending was really thinking along these lines.

As with IP, most of us can see that hydrogen holds great potential and in time should supplant carbon-based fuel to power our cars. Being early stage technology (well, sort of - they've been working on this for a very long time), adoption has been held back by the usual suspects - high unit costs, unreliable fuel cell technology, limited distribution/infrastructure, and worst of all, a lack of political will/vision to bring the electric car into the mainstream. It's really scary when you think about how U.S. and Canadian governments have devoted so little attention to broadband policy/regulation, and how far we're falling behind the rest of the industrialized world. Same story here.

I couldn't help but also notice how much of a silo mentality there is in only talking about cleantech - as if that's the magic bullet that will save the auto industry. Aside from the banks, can you think of an industry that's in more trouble than this? If you think telecom is struggling to transition from 1.0 to 2.0, this sector really has a big hill to climb.

Not that I was expecting a broader agenda today, but there wasn't ever a mention about the bigger picture issues around what kind of cars we need today, how the industry is evolving, where the auto fits relative to other modes of transportation - especially in big cities, etc. There was, thankfully, one good question from the audience, asking about the impact of using lighter materials to build cars. No doubt, the technology is there to develop lighter, stronger materials, and of course that would be a huge step forward in making cars more practical.

One panelist did concede that when the Chinese start bringing $5,000 electric cars to North America, we won't be able to compete. Ugh. I don't think we're too far away from that scenario, and what is GM going to do then?

I could certainly go on about the parallels to telecom, but I think you can see where I'm coming from on that front. Give me a ring if you want to take that thought further, but right now I'm working up to my big finish. My reference to GM just now wasn't an accident. Today's session painfully reminded me of a must-see CBC documentary on the fate of the electric car. Titled "Who Killed The Electric Car?", if this doesn't lay bare the 1.0 thinking that has effectively destroyed GM, I don't know what will. In short, it tells the ill-fated story about the EV-1, perhaps the greatest flash of innovation from GM in a generation. It was a first generation electric car, launched as a trial in the 1990's in California in response to the growing need for greener, zero emission cars in that state.

As the film shows, the vehicle was a hit with the lucky few hundred who got to drive one. Then the dark side emerges, and we learn about the ugly forces that caused the EV-1 to be taken off the market, and then destroyed with barely a trace. If you thought Stalin's historical revisionism was evil, you'll love this documentary, and I'm so glad Michael Moore didn't get his hands on it first (mind you, Roger and Me is pretty good too!). For Canadians, of course, this just screams Avro Arrow, and you just have to wonder where the auto sector would be today if GM hadn't been so frickin' shortsighted. I better stop now if I know what's good for me. Anyhow, you can check out this doc online here, and if you get CBC TV, you're in luck, as it's being re-broadcast this weekend. If you care about the auto market, you don't want to miss it.

January 21, 2009

Deloitte's Predictions Event

January 21, 2009/ Jon Arnold

Yesterday I attended Deloitte's annual Predictions 2009 event here in Toronto. This is their 8th year doing this, and it keeps getting bigger and better, so there's definitely an appetite for their views. The presentation is built around Deloitte's ongoing global research covering TMT - Technology, Media, Telecom. There's a whole lot there, and for each area of TMT, they have 10 major global predictions. Yesterday's focus was on the Canadian market, and as a teaser, they narrowed it down to 13 with the most local impact.

The presentation was primarily led by Duncan Stewart, who is Deloitte Canada's Director of Research. He did a great job and is a very engaging presenter - not too geeky, but with enough edge to explain why these trends matter for the audience.

Key takeaway trends that resonated for me...

- Newspapers are in trouble - which we all know, but maybe not fully enough. The demand for news is actually growing, but their business model is broken and they're not moving fast enough. Lots to talk about here.

- The power grid needs to - and will - get a lot smarter in 2009. There is no other aspect of public infrastructure more critical for everyone, yet in such serious need of modernizing. We take power for granted, but SmartGrid technologies can't come along fast enough, and he talked about some Canadian companies doing great things here.

- Netbooks are very hot, and for good reason. Pretty impressive trend data showing just how popular they're becoming and why. I want one!

- Social networking in business is on the rise - not just because it's familiar to many of us, but because as IT investments go, it's very affordable, and can deliver a great ROI, especially in terms of knowledge management.

- Mobile advertising is set to take off. No surprise there, and this touched on a few trends actually. Was nice to see Duncan cite some Canadian winners in this space, namely Impact Mobile, MyThum and OZ Communications - companies I've posted about in the past.

- Mobile broadband is huge, but networks aren't expanding fast enough to manage the traffic. He cited companies like Sandvine, Bridgewater, DragonWave and Redline as having success helping carriers do this, not just for Canadian carriers, but globally as well.

- The browser is becoming the new OS. I really liked that line - he's basically saying that SaaS and cloud computing will be a major trend in 2009, and based on some of my current client work, I couldn't agree more. He cited a great stat showing how Microsoft has lost 10% of the browser market in the last 12 months, and he noted that he can't think of any other example where they've lost that much share in so little time. It's coming of course at the expense of Linux, but Chrome is gaining adoption too. This will be a very interesting and important space and I'll be following it for sure.

Overall, nothing really groundbreaking here, and for many of you, this will be familiar ground. Fair enough, but it's not just telecom here, and I like the broader view that Deloitte brings to all this. Plus, they focus as much on the business implications and homegrown solutions as the actual nuts and bolts behind each trend.

Finally, what I really liked about Predictions is how Deloitte is using the tools themselves to make this event interesting. Have a look at their website, which will give you all kinds of Predictions 2009 content - both traditional and new media. Aside from the press release and pdf downloads of the highlights, you can also view video clips of Duncan's presentations, a Flickr photo album, and links to all the other social networking tools they're using to build community around Deloitte's thought leadership. Definitely not your father's accounting firm.

John Ruffolo - opening remarks