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Tamara Vandersluis, Vice President, InnovationIn an interaction with CIO Applications, Tamara Vandersluis, Vice President, Innovation, at R2i, shares her insights into the value proposition, and the industry-grade solutions and services of the company.
What are some of the challenges prevailing in the industry andhow R2i is helping to mitigate these challenges?
The challenges in the industry are multifold. Many of the clients are not interested in the public cloud as they want to be assured about the location of their data at all times. Another challenge is the transformation from legacy systems to cloud infrastructure without affecting the operations. Moreover, some of our clients who own fully-fledged cloud infrastructure face difficulties in managing the alerts generated to maintain uptime of their applications. On the other hand, as the data has been moving from on-premise to cloud, there is a considerable increase in data breaches. These data breaches incur significant financial losses and reputational damage to any organization.
R2i offers complete IT solutions for clients to address these challenges efficiently and meet their business goals. We have a fully qualified team that can manage the architecture, analysis, implementation, management, and maintenance of all IBM Power Systems (AIX, IBM I, SAP Hana and Linux environments) as well as Intel environment. We enable our clients to seamlessly migrate to the cloud while we manage their legacy systems. Our solutions and services ensure that all the client's applications are running correctly without hampering their operations.
As a partner, we work hand in hand with the tech giant as we leverage IBM’s solutions, and IBM also avails our services during critical events
Can you throw some light on the solutions and services of R2i?
We offer on-premise services as well as allow the clients to run their infrastructure on our cloud environment. We have a robust cloud environment that provides enhanced freedom and flexibility to the users to deploy their applications cost-effectively. We also help our clients to set up their infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in IBM Power Systems. Our IaaS solution helps them avoid cost overruns and lengthy delays. Basically, we deliver end-to-end services to get our client's IT initiatives off the ground, from a knowledgeable team to large servers, open environments, software solutions, networks, data centers, and related hardware.
Besides, we have carved a niche in the industry for our innovative AI solutions. We offer an open-source and scalable infrastructure that allows the clients to run their AI workloads on a high-speed GPU server. Our solutions assist them in extrapolating insights into their data and addressing various business challenges such as supply chain efficiency, customer experience and satisfaction, quality control, maintenance costs, employee safety, and multiple others.
What does the IBM partnership bring to the table for R2i?
After just a year and a half of our inception, we became the first platinum partner of IBM in Quebec and third in Canada.
We help our clients to extract the most out of their IT resources by leveraging IBM's systems. As an expert in the AI realm, we enable our clients to deploy IBM PowerAI Vision and IBM Power9 and help them accelerate the adoption of AI capabilities. We also have ACC922 from IBM in our cloud to improve our AI capabilities. IBM is delighted with our offerings and has encouraged us to expand beyond Canada. As a partner, we work hand in hand with the tech giant as we leverage IBM’s solutions, and IBM also avails our services during critical events. On top of that, IBM Labs Services out of Rochester, Minnesota, has recognized us as an expert in their product PowerHA that provides high availability, business continuity, and disaster recovery. Besides, we are also planning to leverage IBM Garage to help our customers move towards a blockchain solution.
What are some of the value differentiators for the company?
We have a reliable and experienced technical team that supports the clients at every path, be it a small or a critical situation, which enables seamless business operations for them. We provide the same equipment to our clients that we purchase for our cloud infrastructure. Another value differentiator for us is our annual event, Evolution, where we discuss new technology with our clients and potential clients. Our clients gain insights into various new technologies, which help them stay ahead in the innovation game. For our innovative solutions and services, we have won many prestigious awards such as North American Systems Channel Excellence award by IBM, 2018 and 2019 Startup 50 rankings, Mercuriades Startup award, and also Canada’s 50 top-growing companies of 2019 according to the Globe and Mail Report on Business.
What are some of the future roadmaps for R2i?
Starting with three employees, R2i has more than 30 employees presently, and we are planning to grow our strength to 50 employees in the next two years. We are also aiming to open our Offices in Quebec City, Toronto and Ottawa and expand geographically. Moreover, because of the enormous market potential of cognitive technologies, we are building our AI capabilities to stand out in the market.
December 14, 2019
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