IBM Client Innovation Centre to Open in Montreal

New delivery centre to fast track clients' digital transformation, create up to 500 highly-skilled local jobs

MONTREAL, Nov. 30, 2016 /CNW/ - IBM Canada Ltd. today announced a new IBM Client Innovation Centre (CIC) in Montreal to fast track the digital transformation of both public and private Canadian organizations. As part of IBM's global network of IBM delivery centres worldwide, this second global delivery centre in Canada is expected to create up to 500 new jobs over the next five years to meet clients' growing and evolving technology and innovative business needs.

The Centre will be modeled after the IBM Client Innovation Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia which opened in March 2013 and has grown seven-fold since then; it now employs close to 500 people and serves more than 30 clients from around the world.

The Montreal CIC will feature industry-focused services such as integrated software packages – for SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Workday – Java and .Net development and testing, as well as specialized industry software including analytics, data management, enterprise content management, and order management.

The Montreal CIC expects almost half of its new employees to be recent graduates from local educational institutions and young professionals who will receive intensive training and mentoring programs to further develop their skills in various fields of expertise.

"This is an important milestone for IBM in Canada," said Claude Guay, vice-president and lead partner of IBM Global Business Services in Quebec and president of LGS Group Consulting Corporation. "The Montreal Client Innovation Centre will help drive the digital transformation of our Canadian clients and promote economic growth by creating specialized jobs and making local investments."

Quebec-based Agropur Cooperative – a recognized leader in the Canadian dairy industry – is one of the first clients of the Montreal CIC. "The creation of the Montreal CIC gives Agropur Cooperative, as well as other Quebec companies, a direct and rapid access to a pool of skills crucial to the evolution of our technologies, skills that would otherwise be hired from outside the province or country," said Serge Fortier, chief information officer at Agropur Cooperative. "The successes achieved to date are encouraging and spur us to greater use of CIC Montreal resources."

Cascades, the largest recycled paper collector in Canada and leader in the production and conversion of corrugated products, tissue paper, and specialty products in North America, is another client turning to IBM's Montreal CIC for services and resources to support its digital evolution. "Cascades is undergoing a major transformation and we had to find a way to add flexibility to the services we offer to our business units," said Martin Constant, director of IT infrastructure and operations at Cascades. "Fast access to qualified and bilingual resources is a challenge for us. Integrating the Montreal CIC in our model gives us much more latitude."

The Client Innovation Centres in Quebec and Nova Scotia are part of a network of IBM delivery centres located in more than 30 countries to serve customers worldwide. IBM has an integrated set of specialized tools, processes, and expertise that will be transplanted into this new centre in order to provide applications of superior quality to its clients.

About IBM

IBM is one of Canada's top ten private R&D investors, and in 2015 contributed more than $477million to Canadian research activities. IBM has a unique approach to collaboration that provides academic researchers, small and large business, start-ups and developers with business strategies and computing tools they need to innovate. Areas of focus include health, agile computing, water, energy, cities, mining, advanced manufacturing, digital media and cybersecurity. IBM and its partners have in the past three years helped create more than 240 high-value jobs and launch more than three dozen new businesses. Please visit http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ca/en/canadian-innovation.html

SOURCE IBM Canada Ltd.

Media Contacts: Marc Rochette IBM, [phone], [email protected]; Lorraine Baldwin, IBM, [phone], [email protected]