Bjerring to relinquish CANARIE helm as it ramps up under new funding commitment

Dr Andrew Bjerring has announced his intention step down as president and CEO of CANARIE after 14 years at the helm and weeks after successfully securing a new five-year, $120-million funding commitment (R$, March 26/07). The decision to leave early in the new funding cycle is deliberate, allowing time for a new chief executive to settle into the organization before tackling the dual tasks of redefining its strategic direction and seeking further funding.

"This is a planned transition. It gives the new person the opportunity to get their feet firmly planted before new challenges come up," says Bjerring. "The concept is for an orderly transition within a year to get the programs we're starting ramped up and initial projects underway."

Bjerring will depart on or before March 31/08, depending on the progress of a search process initiated by the CANARIE board of directors. But he is offering his services to work with the new president on strategic development. In the meantime, he says he'll be running hard to get the next generation of CAnet up and running and re-branding both the advanced research network and organization under the single name of The CANARIE Network.

"There's lots of work to do in the coming year," says Bjerring. "Beyond that, there's a longer-term term strategic challenge. The new person will need two or three years to deal with the next funding challenge."

15-year window

Bjerring has been associated with CANARIE since its beginning in 1993, having served as treasurer of the CAnet board prior to its formation. With the exception of a two-month term by Carmelo Tillona, Bjerring has been the organization's only president. During his tenure he has been witness to — and a key participant in — a revolution in telecommunications and connectivity that has utterly transformed the nature of research and communications in general. From those pioneering days to the present, the speed of the research network has increased about one million times. The network links to 10 provinces, three territories, and more than 80 universities, 50 colleges, 2,000 schools, 40 research centres, 60 hospitals and 50 government departments.

"This is the most rewarding and exciting career involvement I could ever have imagined. No one could see it coming back then. We only had a partial idea of what we were participating in," he says. "CANARIE helped Canada get off in the right direction and today we are among the leading countries if you look at any set of indicators."

The recent federal Budget finally responded to CANARIE's requests for a reaffirmation of its mandate and sufficient funding to carry it through the next evolution of networking. The timing of the announcement was so tight that CANARIE had to extend the contracts with key service providers to ensure uninterrupted service to its stakeholders. The majority of CANARIE users are university-based and government researchers working in areas as diverse as nuclear physics, drug design, high-speed computing and ocean mapping.

Bjerring credits the long-term support from Industry Canada officials for CANARIE's longevity and success at keeping Canada on the leading edge of networking. It has allowed CANARIE to develop applications and technologies identified and acted on by industry and bring together whole communities of users in areas such as e-learning and telehealth. CANARIE was also instrumental in facilitating Canadian involvement in the CERN and NEPTUNE projects.

"Our friends at Industry Canada that we work with were as supportive as I could ever have hoped for," he says. "We worked with Kevin Lynch as deputy minister and Mike Binder as assistant deputy minister. And their incumbents are also supportive."

In the late 1990s, Canada was the undisputed leader in the development of broadband research networks, leading the world in new networking architectures, applications programs and enabling technologies. That hegemony has been diluted in recent years, as other countries surge ahead in areas such as wireless.

"We're not there in wireless because of changing global systems," says Bjerring. "Other countries are moving ahead so we need to watch out as wireless has become the preferred mode of communications."

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