‘Fourth revolution’ driving Thomson Reuters’ upcoming tech centre, VP says [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Thomson Reuters earned a lot of buzz two months ago after announcing that it would create 1,500 jobs as part of a new technology centre in Toronto. But while that initiative is still taking shape, it’s actually part of broader strategy that includes a network of labs around the world, including existing facilities in Canada.

For example, the Canadian media/financial and legal information giant already has a lab in Waterloo, started more than two years ago, which Mona Vernon, the vice-president of Thomson Reuters Labs, said it’s part of the company’s strategy of associating itself with innovative ecosystems. In the case of Waterloo, that includes connecting with Communitech as well as local startups, while its data scientists leverage the technology corridor connecting that region to Toronto.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Micron’s Successful Quarter Reflects 3D NAND Progress [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

TORONTO — Financial analysts attending yesterday’s quarterly update from Micron Technology were congratulating the company on its strong numbers, but the real story might be that it’s mastered 3D NAND.

“What’s encouraging is where they are with their 3D NAND,” said Jim Handy, principal analyst with Objective Analysis. In a telephone interview with EE Times after Micron’s Q1 2017 conference call, he noted that other vendors, particularly Samsung, have struggled with 3D NAND, whereas Micron appears to making good progress. “Micron’s transition time is going to be longer than other technologies because they have to buy new equipment.”

That includes whole new factory in Singapore, noted Handy. “There’s something that eluded everyone else that Micron seems to have got right.” He speculates that its decision to use a floating gate process might have been a factor, as other vendors went the charge trap route. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised that Micron has shown everyone the need to go with floating gate instead of charge trap.”

Read my full article on EE Times.

New Consortium Drives Micron’s Xccela Bus [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

TORONTO – Micron Technology’s recently launched Xccela Consortium is ostensibly aimed at promoting its high-speed, low signal count octal interface bus and ecosystem, but at least one early member of the group sees as also being necessary for unifying a fragmented market for NOR flash technology that supports the growing market for instant-on applications.

“Serial NOR flash has pretty much diversified over the past decade,” said Mike Chen, GigaDevice Semiconductor’s senior director of technical marketing, in an interview with EE Times. “Everyone has their ideas to and is designing their own product based on their customer needs. Everyone has their own ideas.”

This has led to complicated product lines, Chen said. Based on customer feedback from the field, he said having a standard would make his life much easier. “We see a need in this product line to have some sort of unification,” he said.

Read my full article on EE Times.

A CMO to Know: Kevin Suitor, TELoIP [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Kevin Suitor to didn’t set out to become a CMO, but his college co-op placement changed his intended career path. “I got the selling bug,” he says.

The newly appointed CMO of TELoIP Inc. went to Ottawa’s Algonquin College for electronics engineering and, thanks to one of his professors, found a co-op placement with Bell Canada that would put him down the path of sales rather than technology.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Customers sharing data want to know what’s in it for them

/ Gary Hilson

It’s eleven o’clock. Do you know how your data is being used?

According to research recently released by marketing analytics firm Aimia, the average consumer now realizes their data is valuable to marketers – 42 per now see their data as being highly valuable – but they still don’t understand how it’s being used. Nor do they know how their data is being collected, what is being collected, or how they can maintain control over their personal information.

This insight arrives courtesy of Aimia’s annual Loyalty Lens report, which involved surveying more than 15,000 customers in nine countries in order to predict customer loyalty standards for the year ahead.

Optimism drives tech sector hiring in 2017, but skills shortage remains a challenge – Hays [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Technology companies in Canada are optimistic about hiring next year, but some are skittish about investing in new grads, despite a shortage of talent, according to this year’s Hays Salary Guide.

Now in its seventh year, the annual survey polled employers across the country and in multiple industries for their take on 2016 and what lies ahead, and found the Canadian IT sector was among the country’s most optimistic.

In fact, Hays found that more than three-quarters of IT employers anticipate business growth in the new year, but in true Canadian fashion, they are playing it safe.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Micron’s 3D NAND Hits Enterprise SSDs [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

TORONTO — Micron Technology is declaring spinning disk dead with the introduction of its first solid state drives (SSDs) using its 3D NAND for the enterprise market.

All-flash storage array vendors such as Violin Memory and others have been pushing the message that hard drives are dead for a number of years now, Micron sees spinning media winding down because its new 5100 line of enterprise SATA SSDs are able to offer a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), said Scott Shadley, the company’s principal technologist for its storage business.

In a telephone interview with EE Times, he said the launch of the 5100 series comes on the heels of the company’s success in the client segment with 1100 series of SSDs using Micron’ 3D technology. Shadley acknowledges it isn’t the first to then enterprise market with 3D NAND SSDs, but said Micron is looking to be strategic with its offerings.

Read my full article on EE Times.

Canada’s brain drain under control – but mainly flowing to cities, LinkedIn says [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Canada’s brain drain to Silicon Valley has been a perennial concern for the IT sector, but the flow has stabilized, according to LinkedIn Corp., even if it’s arriving at only a handful of destinations.

Large hub cities such as Toronto are the primary beneficiaries of what appear to be significant spikes in tech-based entrepreneurship and software talent, the company’s Talent Buzz 2016 found, and it’s too soon to tell if a Trump presidency will dramatically redirect the current.

In fact, the report found that entrepreneurship was Canada’s top growing job function, with the number of Canadian sole proprietors increasing by 13 per cent this year, followed by businesses with one to 10 employees, which rose 3 per cent.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Canadians are keeping their e-commerce dollars in the country, PayPal says [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

The “buy local” mentality is not only benefitting bricks-and-mortar shops in Canada, according to research from PayPal Canada, but e-tailers and their social media marketing departments too.

The digital payments company conducted its study in collaboration with Ipsos ahead of Black Friday and found that three out of four Canadian shoppers plan to buy holiday gifts online from Canadian retailers instead of buying from U.S. or international websites, with 43 per cent of those people planning to buy more gifts from Canadian retailers than they did last year. Millennials, meanwhile, are even more apt to buy online from a domestic e-tail site – 83 per cent, in fact.

So why is it cool to shop online in Canada now?

Read my full story on ITBusiness.ca.

Foster innovation and inclusivity through storytelling, Google-led report says [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Using innovation and digital storytelling to both foster inclusivity and break down silos between the arts and business communities appears to have been the key message to emerge from a recent joint effort to discover what’s necessary for building a creative and entrepreneurial Canada.

Google Canada, Startup Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) recently embarked on a three-month national dialogue series tapping 1,000 Canadian artists, content creators, cultural entrepreneurs and leaders within the innovation, entrepreneurship and academic communities, organizing forums in six cities, a digital consultation, and dozens of in-person interviews to discover ideas that were common across the country.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.