Bell and Cisco partner to build sovereign AI infrastructure for Canada
The companies have signed a memorandum of understanding to combine Bell's data centres with Cisco's AI and security technologies.
MONTREAL — Bell Canada and U.S. technology company Cisco will collaborate to provide sovereign AI infrastructure for Canadian customers.
The pair announced they have signed a memorandum of understanding that will make use of Cisco’s AI, networking, security and infrastructure technologies.
The companies say the partnership will help Canadian organizations deploy, secure and manage AI infrastructure in Canada, while giving customers more flexibility in how they access and scale sovereign AI capacity.
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"Bell is focused on helping turn sovereign AI from ambition into infrastructure Canadian organizations can use," said John Watson, group president of Bell Business Markets, Bell Cyber, AI Fabric and Ateko.
"That requires secure Canadian data centre capacity, high-performance connectivity, operational expertise and trusted technology working together. Through this collaboration with Cisco, we will work to make it easier to deploy and scale sovereign AI infrastructure for customers that need greater control, resilience and confidence in the systems behind their most critical workloads."
The collaboration will bring together Bell's data centre, network and operations capabilities with Cisco's AI, security, observability, infrastructure monitoring and management, and Sovereign Critical Infrastructure technologies.
"Cisco's Sovereign Critical Infrastructure portfolio is designed to give customers more choice in how they build, secure and manage the digital environments that support critical operations," said Raj Juneja, president of Cisco Canada.
"By working with Bell, we can bring those capabilities together with Canadian data centre capacity, connectivity and operations to support sovereign AI infrastructure that is configurable, secure and easier for organizations to deploy with confidence."
The companies said the collaboration will focus on three core areas: building a Canadian platform for sovereign AI, supporting modular AI infrastructure deployments and developing flexible commercial models.
They will work to bring together Bell's Canadian data centre space, power, cooling, physical security, connectivity and operations services with Cisco AI infrastructure.
The partnership will also assess how Cisco AI PODs architectures, which provide modular building blocks for different AI workloads, can be combined with Canadian infrastructure.
It’s the latest in a series of announcements from Bell related to its growing AI and tech offerings.
The company signed a deal in June with Cohere for the AI firm to operate its large language models through Bell AI Fabric, with support from two other companies.
Earlier this month, Bell said it intends to quadruple the size of its planned data centre project in Saskatchewan, with the expansion expected to boost the capacity of the facility to 1.2 gigawatts.
The collaboration builds on Bell's work through Bell AI Fabric and Cisco's sovereign AI infrastructure advancements to help expand the capabilities needed for trusted AI adoption in Canada.
With files from The Canadian Press, BNN Bloomberg and The Globe and Mail