Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/507045
T Technology 28 APRIL/MAY 2015 www.vanguardcanada.com We've all participated in the Video- or tele- conference, the one with the fi xed start time (sort of), the one where participants connect and then seem to disconnect for no apparent reason, the one where infor- mation is displayed (but not everyone can see it). Video conferencing has been very suc- cessful at cost-effectively bringing togeth- er dispersed workforces and individuals from multiple departments or agencies. But it's not how we really communicate with one another, especially in a crisis. In a world of mobile devices, being able to turn a two-person conversation into a three, four or even 10 person discussion, complete the ability to share various forms of information or stream live video, is in- valuable, especially when employees are scattered during an emergency and deci- sions are required immediately. Ken Davison is chief marketing offi - cer for Magor, a small Ottawa tech fi rm founded in 2007 by a group of former Newbridge Networks employees, that saw an "opportunity to make video work the way we talk and work." "We don't work to a scheduled environ- ment, we want to be able to hold meetings when we need to," he observes. And most enterprise videoconferencing approaches were designed around supporting meet- ings, offering no or limited "ability to support more ad-hoc conversations where people need to bring relevant information in on-the-fl y from different sources." With Magor's Aerus Service Delivery Platform, the company has been able to shift from what Davison calls a "presenta- tion model" of video conferencing to a "collaborative model of visual conversa- tions." Capitalizing on the rapid growth of smart phones and a potential customer base that recognizes the power of mobility, Aerus al- INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES TO WATCH 5 with each call for proposals, the federal government's Build in Canada Innovation Program is amassing a remarkable list of Canadian-developed military and security technology. from Mount Pearl in Newfound- land to North Saanich in British Columbia, companies of all sizes have successfully pre-qualifi ed over 150 cutting-edge technologies, many of which are now available for testing with a government department or agency. In this issue, we profi le fi ve: one that has been successfully tested and four that have attracted considerable interest from the Canadian Armed forces. by benoit maraval and chris Thatcher We've all participated in We've all participated in We've all participated in We've all participated in We've all participated in We've all participated in We've all participated in Visual conversations: Crisis communications goes mobile