Mark Roman steps down after six months

Jim Roche is back in the driver's seat at CANARIE to steer the organization through a key phase of its mandate renewal following the unexpected resignation of president and CEO Mark Roman October 12th after just six months on the job. Roche, who previously served as interim president and CEO for 15 months until last April, says he expects the transition will be virtually seamless and holds out high hopes that the government will extend the CANARIE mandate beyond March 31/12.

"Coming back to the CEO position is a very easy transition for me. I've stayed close to the key files and the current mandate," says Roche, who remained at CANARIE as its chief strategy officer (CSO). "This (Roman's departure for personal reasons) is more of the turmoil within CANARIE that has been dogging the organization since Andy (Bjerring) left."

As CSO, Roche was closely involved in the organization's renewal efforts, current programs and marketing and communications, accompanying Roman to key meetings with government officials and stakeholders. While few details of CANARIE's renewal proposal have been released, it's expected it will seek funding to increase network bandwidth and extend its reach to more institutions and government labs, expand its pilot innovation test bed initiative for smaller firms to take advantage of cloud computing and develop new tools for accelerating "speed time to discovery".

"It's possible that CANARIE won't receive funding or as much as it now receives ($120 million over five years) and that would have a huge impact," says Roche. "We are offering a number of options and we expect one to be adopted. One is to shut down CANARIE which would have significant negative consequences for the research and education community. At the other end we could receive a big increase which would allow Canada to regain lost ground in the area of high-speed networking."

There's no questioning the need for CANARIE or a similar organization. Its high-speed research network, which connects more than 1,100 institutions and one million researchers, experienced a 50% increase in traffic in 2010 over the previous year. And under Roche the organization has reached out to the business community with the pilot Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR) program, offering up part of its network as a testbed to develop, validate and demonstrate new product and service offerings.

CANARIE's role in connecting the research and education community both within Canada and internationally remains its core function and the bedrock of its renewal strategy. In recent months, it has rolled out new services to enhance its networking function with a peering service which provides lower-cost access to content providers, and established the Canadian Access Federation in conjunction with the Canadian University Council of CIOs to give researchers easy access to the network regardless which university campus they're working from.

CANARIE deemed the best model

A 2009 study by Hickling Arthurs Low examined the various models for a high-speed research networking organization and concluded that CANARIE remains the best option. The CANARIE model was cited for is arm's length status, giving it the ability to respond with speed and flexibility to priorities of the government (its primary funder), industry and research and education communities. Roche points to the DAIR pilot project as an apt example.

"The idea for DAIR came directly from the consultations for the Digital Economy Strategy (DES) and the pilot has proven its worth … It is exceeding expectations in terms of demand and benefits provided to SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises)," he says. "It's going really well with 23 companies so far availing themselves of the program. CANARIE is providing a leadership role in helping SMEs in the cloud computing environment."

This isn't the first time Roche — a veteran of Ottawa's high-tech sector and co-founder of Tundra Semiconductor Corp —has been called upon to temporarily occupy CANARIE's top spot. Last year, he stepped in when its president, Guy Bujold, unexpectedly resigned two years into a five-year term (R$, February 19/10). At that time, Roche and the board decided to make CANARIE a more business-facing organization to assist a rapidly growing number of industries that require high-speed networking to conduct R&D. The opportunity arose when the federal government launched the DES and CANARIE responded by realigning itself to match government priorities with its DAIR pilot program.

If renewed, CANARIE also proposes to expand its highly popular Network Enabled Platforms program, which funds the development of tools and software to help researchers, in a wide range of disciplines, to exploit and share data and research that flow through the CANARIE Network. To-date, the NEP Program has awarded $25.5 million in funding to 20 IT research projects.

"So far the program has targeted research collaboration for specific disciplines," says Roche. "We want to take it to the next level and create an integrated platform for use by all researchers."

tight fiscal environment

The current environment poses a particularly difficult challenge for enabling organizations. In the 2010 Budget, Finance minister Jim Flaherty drew a line in the sand and denied funding for several older programs seeking renewed funding and/or an expanded mandate. That cut funding to organizations like Precarn Inc, which closed its doors at the end of September despite being praised for its effective commercialization model and strategic support for small innovative businesses (R$, September 28/11) .

With the downturn in the economy worldwide, the government is adamant to eliminate its annual deficit by 2014 and is seeking $4 billion in savings prior to the next federal Budget. Whether the release of the DES (now months overdue) will improve the chances of CANARIE's renewal is anyone's guess.

A change is Industry ministers from Tony Clement to Christian Paradis has also injected another variable into the mix.

"All the key departments and organizations understand the importance of CANARIE. Clement was clearly an early adopter of technology and a big supporter of ICT," says Roche. "Paradis has been briefed on CANARIE but Industry is a big and complex portfolio so the bureaucrats are working to ensure that he is brought up to speed.

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