New server technology could bring more portable office services to Atlantic Canada

A small Newfoundland company has received a cash infusion to develop a new server backbone that will create a portable office for mobile workers in the industrial, commercial and public safety markets. St. John’s-based Consilient Technologies Corp expects to have its first subscribers to its Internet data service signed up within three months, although it will take up to a year before the backbone architecture is in place."In the beginning, we will distribute services that are developed in other parts of the world, even hosted in other parts of the world, develop a subscriber base and then move those applications and subscribers to the Consilient Server as the technology becomes developed," Trevor Adey, president of Consilient told Report on Wireless. "But I anticipate we will have a significant number of subscribers on our network in two to three months." Incorporated last summer, the St. John’s-based company secured phase one funding for its latest digital cellular technology from Maritime telco Aliant, and the Canadian Centre for Marine Communications (CCMC) as part of their Wireless R&D initiative program. The funding amount was not disclosed. How quickly the five-employee company is able to ramp up its sales, marketing and R&D staff, and expand into other cities will depend on how quickly it closes a number of pending carrier and application development deals. "As soon as we get those deals closed, we’ll be hiring sales people in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver," he says. The company hopes to replicate its business model in the U.S. in about 12 months. The Consilient Server is unique in that it is network and protocol agnostic, providing carriers and other companies with nationwide seamless coverage regardless of a region’s particular network technology. "So our objective is to take that challenge away from the customer and to be able to offer a solution through partnerships with different carriers in different areas," Adey says. "So the customer doesn’t have to worry about those inconsistencies as they travel from St. John’s to Victoria." Some application development will be in-house The company will also be developing its own mobile workforce management applications, but isn’t looking to steal marketshare away from any of the existing players. "We will be looking for technologies that are on the cutting edge and have a subscriber base in other parts of the world and we will be integrating them with our wireless carrier partners here in Canada and offering a total service in Canada," he says. "We’re trying to make the pie bigger, not steal portions of the pie that exists (today) because I don’t think the pie is that big today." The Consilient server will function as the backbone to the company’s end-to-end workforce management applications, targeting the urban workers who need access to their company’s databases when on the road. The work flow management application does scheduling, inventory tracking, billing and all the other types of work flow functions that were previously done by hand on paper. Sales efforts are focused on healthcare, utilities, HVAC equipment, telecommunications, public safety and construction markets.

New server technology could bring more portable office services to Atlantic Canada

News | February 19, 2001

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