L-SPARK, TELUS, BlackBerry and Solace announce first startups into Secure IoT Accelerator

Accelerator with Canadian IoT, 5G tech focus selects four startups for four-month development program.

L-SPARK, TELUS, BlackBerry Limited and Solace today announced the inaugural startups into the Secure IoT Accelerator program to scale Canadian Internet of Things (IoT) ventures for the global market.

Selection of the four startups follows a nation-wide search with a focus on IoT and 5G technology. With the global IoT market predicted to grow to USD $1.1 trillion by 2021, more complex applications and the need for greater security are driving innovation within the industry, a trend the Secure IoT Accelerator aims to address.

The selected companies include:

Flosonics Medical: Canadian founded and venture-backed medical device company focused on developing non-invasive sensors to improve the management of critically-ill patients. Flosonics Medical’s flagship product, FloPatch, addresses unmet clinical needs of critically-ill patients and the physicians, nurses, and paramedics who care for them in the ambulance, emergency department, operating room, and intensive care unit.

Canscan: Artificial intelligence software company focused on the maritime transport industry. In partnership with the Port of Montreal and one of the terminal operators, they have developed a system that uses both AI and machine vision to perform an automatic inspection of containers arriving at the port terminal.

Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA): A not-for-profit organization, best known for managing the .CA internet domain on behalf of all Canadians. The company develops and implements policies that support Canada’s internet community and represents the .CA registry internationally. They build programs, products and services that leverage all the internet has to offer to help build a better online Canada.

Platoi Industries Inc.: An insight driven company building Hazard Information and Event Management (HIEM) technology: an advanced predictive IP protecting infrastructure from inevitable climate change hazards, like landslides – a $4.4B yearly problem in North America. Platoi is raising the bar on current market solutions with their ability to timely identify, locate, monitor and predict hazards.

The accelerator is for Canadians, by Canadians: each of the four selected startups look to further the country’s future prospects in tech applications, while each of the accelerator partners are Canadian companies with investment in the country’s up-and-coming tech talent.

The four-month accelerator program offers exclusive access to TELUS Global Connectivity and IoT Cybersecurity services, BlackBerry’s secure operating system, and Solace’s industry-leading data movement capabilities. The program aims to facilitate the development and demonstration of new applications prior to the general market availability of the platform.

Furthermore, each of the startups will receive technical mentoring from TELUS, BlackBerry and Solace experts, and business mentoring from L-SPARK to accelerate company growth and facilitate business development opportunities. All other benefits associated with L-SPARK acceleration programs, including access to L-SPARK’s extensive SaaS, cloud and IoT technology community, will be on offer to the accelerator startups.

“The explosive growth of the IoT market has prompted intensive interest in securing this proliferation of devices, applications, and systems,” said Leo Lax, Executive Managing Director of L-SPARK. “The L-SPARK Secure IoT dev kit provides a ‘one-stop’ solution to IoT suppliers. The accelerator will showcase real life use cases solving the issues of provisioning, updating, and securing the applications at scale.”

Applications into the accelerator closed in April, with L-SPARK and accelerator partners conducting a roadshow across the country to engage with interested firms on a more direct basis.

Following that, a bootcamp-style hackathon hosted 12 finalists, where a selection committee judged their presentations to select the four program participants.

About TELUS
TELUS (TSX: T, NYSE: TU) is one of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, with $14.5 billion of annual revenue and 14.0 million subscriber connections, including 9.7 million wireless subscribers, 1.9 million Internet subscribers, 1.2 million residential voice and 1.1 million TELUS TV customers. TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services, including wireless, data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, television, entertainment, video and home and business security. TELUS is also Canada’s largest healthcare IT provider, and TELUS International delivers business process solutions around the globe. For more information about TELUS, please visit telus.com.

About BlackBerry
BlackBerry (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) is a trusted security software and services company that provides enterprises and governments with the technology they need to secure the Internet of Things. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company is unwavering in its commitment to safety, cybersecurity and data privacy, and leads in key areas such as artificial intelligence, endpoint security and management, encryption and embedded systems. For more information, visit BlackBerry.com and follow @BlackBerry.

About Solace
Solace is a data distribution platform used by enterprise clients to move hundreds of billions of events per day. Their advanced event broker, PubSub+, is the only unified message broker that supports publish/subscribe, queueing, request/reply and streaming using open APIs and protocols across hybrid cloud and IoT environments. This allows for a rapid and reliable route of information between applications, devices and people.

About L-SPARK
L-SPARK is Canada’s leading accelerator for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. Since the launch of their first cohort in January 2015, L-SPARK has accelerated 47 companies across Canada. With over 10,000 investors, corporate partners and startups now in their network, L-SPARK has curated a forceful Canadian tech community for participating companies to join.

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