Partnership between Concordia and Ericsson
The industrial application of academic research is a hallmark of Concordia’s Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science.
This fact was recently recognized during the 21st annual gala of the Association pour le développement de la recherche et de l'innovation du Québec (ADRIQ), when the technological partnership prize was jointly presented to Concordia University and Ericsson in honour of Ferhat Khendek’s groundbreaking work with the telecommunications giant.
The partnership between Ericsson and Khendek, a professor within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was a three-year collaboration known as pure MAGIC – that is, the Modeling and Automatic Generation of Information and upgrade Campaigns project.
Jointly funded by Ericsson and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the project examined standardization solutions for the programs that run between a cellular device's operating systems and its applications software, also known as middleware.
Explains Khendek, "Companies like Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, IBM, Microsoft and HP got together to standardize these systems and thereby promote the increased usability of applications developed for them and their customers."
In short, a standardized middleware means that applications can be run on a wider variety of devices. For example, says, Khendek, "If I develop an app, and both Ericsson and Nokia are running the same middleware, the app will work on devices made by both companies."
Khendek and his team helped Ericsson configure these applications and speed up their time to market. The second aspect of the MAGIC project focused on the upgrade of such applications and how best to upgrade them with minimal downtime to the service.
The MAGIC project was jointly funded by Ericsson and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), two organizations that have recently become more closely involved with Khendek’s work through a newly established Industrial Research Chair in Model-based Software Management. This new chair, which will be formally announced in January, will allow Khendek to expand his research into the development of techniques for the integration, configuration, deployment and monitoring of large and complex software systems.
The Prix Partenariat Technologique is presented jointly to a company and an institution that are collaborating in a technological partnership that clearly demonstrates the benefits of shared expertise.
The partnership results in the creation of a new product/procedure/technology, or research and development program, brought to term by the institution for the company, which then successfully ensures the project’s commercialization.
The MAGIC project undertaken by Khendek and his colleagues, both at Concordia and Ericsson, met these requirements, beating out competitors including Innu-Science Canada, CNETE and IDE Trois-Rivières; and Pfizer Canada and Université de Sherbrooke.
The prize was presented during the 21st ADRIQ gala, held in Montreal on November 23.
Related links:
• The MAGIC Project
• Concordia Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering