CATAAlliance singles out embedded systems as key to reindustrializing Canada

More than 72,000 people work in the field of embedded systems in Canada, according to a new Sciencetech report released in partnership with the Canadian Alliance for Advanced Technology (CATAAlliance).

Embedded systems are the tip of a larger phenomenon that is the entrance of information technology in all industries. More and more everyday objects are being embedded with processors and sensors, connected to distant servers, creating tomorrow’s “Internet of things,” according to the recently released analysis report.

In 2012, Canada will launch an international centre of excellence for electronic assembly research in Bromont, Que. – The MiQro Innovation Collaborative Centre. The research centre is expected to position Canadian microelectronics technology on the world scene, and is once in a lifetime opportunity for the embedded systems industry in Canada, according to Sciencetech, a company specializing in research and market analysis in information technology.

“Every manufacturing company must take advantage of the presence on Canada of a vibrant industry of embedded systems,” said Sciencetech senior analyst Jean-Guy Rens. “Intelligence is becoming the top factor in consumer products choice. This is true not only in consumer electronics, but in all manufactured products, from automobiles to sports shoes.”

The report says that today’s manufacturing companies must insert intelligence into objects and into the whole human-made environment (buildings, roads, bridges, canals, dams), or suffer the same fate of the telecommunications sector during the 1980s and 1990s when the network was digitized and many companies disappeared. That is why CATAAlliance can assert that the control of embedded systems is crucial for the future of Canada’s manufacturing industry. Learn more from Jean-Guy Rens’ analysis, The Other Computing, here.