Bell and Cisco announced Tuesday they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on a sovereign AI infrastructure offering for Canada.
The solution will combine Bell’s data centre, network and operations capabilities with Cisco’s AI, security, observability, infrastructure monitoring and management, and Sovereign Critical Infrastructure technologies.
“As more organizations deploy AI at scale, the need for infrastructure that can support sensitive workloads, meet strict security requirements and operate close to home is growing,” reads a Bell press release. “Through this collaboration, Bell and Cisco will aim to address the needs of customers in government, regulated industries and other sectors where trust, control and resilience are critical.”
As part of the collaboration, Bell and Cisco will assess how Cisco AI POD architectures, which provide modular building blocks for different AI workloads, and relevant capabilities from Cisco’s Sovereign Critical Infrastructure portfolio can be combined with Canadian infrastructure, connectivity and operations services.
Bell and Cisco aim to develop flexible commercial models, so customers can better align costs with how they use or reserve AI infrastructure, Bell said.
“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 for customers that need greater control over critical digital environments,” Bell said.
“Bell is focused on helping turn sovereign AI from ambition into infrastructure Canadian organizations can use. That requires secure Canadian data centre capacity, high-performance connectivity, operational expertise and trusted technology working together,” John Watson, Bell’s group president of business markets, Bell Cyber, AI Fabric and Ateko, said in the press release. “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.”
