Cisco Canada has handed out the awards in the third round of its Fast Future Innovation Awards, and its partner community led the way, with partners behind three of the four solutions the networking giant recognized.

The awards are a product of Cisco Canada’s Digital Impact Office and aim to recognize partners and customers asking big questions and looking to apply specific technologies to address big issues. 

“Fast Future is a call to any Canadian customer that needs help solving a problem with technology; we look for wild and crazy ideas,” said Wayne Cuervo, director of the Digital Impact Office at Cisco Canada. “From tactical to big problems that our customers need to solve, and everything in between.”

This being 2024, the Fast Future awards this time have turned their attention to solutions around AI. Cuervo said that’s topical. It’s an area where customers have been unable to prepare for a very strong megatrend, and by showing what they can do with the Fast Future awards, Cisco hopes to use the awards as “the start of a conversation” about AI more broadly in the Canadian business sphere.

Submissions are evaluated based on the importance and innovation of the idea behind the solution, its meaning to customers and society, and the feasibility of bringing a solution to market.

Cisco has always loudly proclaimed its partner-centric nature, and partners have been represented in the past Fast Future Innovation Award winners. Still, Cuervo said this year, the community “really came to the table with some great submissions.”

“We had a hard time selecting the winners because we had such strong submissions this year,” he said.

Europe-based partner Computacenter was recognized for a smart building solution that uses AI to develop “truly cognitive buildings” that combine IT and OT and add value to both building owners and employees.

“This is something AI is particularly poised to help solve,” Cuervo said.

Distributor Ingram Micro Canada teamed up with SaaS company Premise HQ on another smart building solution recognized in the awards. This solution uses building networks and AI to transform tenant experiences in the buildings they live and work in.

Solution provider Compugen was recognized for using AI to implement, augment and simplify security.

“It’s important, feasible, and innovative because security is so relevant and required, but adding AI makes it the tip of the spear,” Cuervo said.

The other recognized solution was from ALUS, a charitable organization that helps ranchers and farmers “produce ecosystem services from nature-based solutions.” The winning offering uses AI and machine learning to help quantify water management, carbon monitoring and biodiversity.

The awards focus on taking solutions from what is possible to the market. So, while the hardware has been handed out, Cuervo said that “now the work gets started” in terms of defining, specifying, and building out the solutions.

Typically, this starts with winners working with Cisco on a design sprint to define the solution and its current state, determine what still needs to be done, and then start making the connections to bring the solutions together. Cuervo said that the process can take between three and eight months to get winning solutions into the market.