Carleton unveiled its new cloud computing research lab Jan. 12, as part of a $1.4 million partnership with telecommunications companies Huawei and Telus Corp.
The lab is located in the Canal Building, the university’s new engineering building.
“This partnership reflects the work the [engineering] faculty has been doing to position Carleton as the leading school in the IT field,” said Scott Bradley, Huawei Canada’s vice-president corporate and government affairs.
Huawei Canada’s partnership with Carleton made sense largely because of its proximity to their expanding research facilities in Kanata and Ottawa’s reputation as a high-tech community, Bradley said.
Cloud computing services allow users to acquire and store data on demand from providers, rather than host the products and information on their own computers.
The initiative will give students hands-on training required to become competitive in the job market, Rafik Goubran, dean of Carleton’s faculty of engineering, said in a press release.
Putting equipment into students’ hands and have them train with it is a terrific idea, Bradley said.
“I think it’s good business for us, and I think it’s smart to partner with a university,” he said.
“It’s where the next great idea is going to come from.”
