AWS Canada opens Partner Innovation Hub to help partners move AI from prototype to production

Martin Brazinet, head of Technology at AWS (https://channelbuzz.ca/tag/aws/) Canada AWS Canada (https://aws.amazon.com/) has opened its first Canadian Partner Innovation Hub in Toronto, a purpose-built facility designed to help Canadian businesses move from AI experimentation to production-ready implementation – with their partners in the lead. The center, publicly announced June 2 at the AWS Summit Canada, is the Canadian evolution of AWS’s GenAI Innovation Center (GenAIIC) model. Globally, 65 percent of solutions that went through the GenAIIC program (https://channelbuzz.ca/tag/program/) have made it to production, some in as few as 45 days. The key distinction for the Toronto hub: it is explicitly built around partner delivery and scale. “Seventy percent of our customers are hoping to get their GenAI implementation done using a partner,” said Martin Brazinet, head of technology at AWS Canada. “Having an environment where we can bring our launch partners and show cross-industry specificity is how this came about.” The facility opens with four launch partners: CGI (https://www.cgi.com/en) , Dedicatted (https://dedicatted.com/) , Elevata (https://elevata.io/en) , and OpsGuru (https://www.opsguru.com/) . Each visit is tailored rather than templated – partners customize the demos and talk track for a specific customer, then move into a structured workshop designed to get C-suite, architects, and line-of-business stakeholders aligned on a shared action plan before they leave. Dinesh Bhavsar (https://channelbuzz.ca/tag/dinesh-bha...) , director of AI, emerging technologies and innovation at CGI (https://channelbuzz.ca/tag/cgi/) , said the space addresses a gap he sees regularly in how customers approach AI adoption. “If you’re starting with AI as the solution, you’ve already failed,” he told In The Channel. “You haven’t thought about what problem you’re actually trying to solve.” AWS says it intends to expand access beyond the four launch partners, with industry specificity and differentiated offerings being the primary selection criteria for future participants. Read Full Transcript Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca (https://channelbuzz.ca/tag/ca/) , bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, your host for the show. So here’s a number worth thinking about. 650,000 Canadian businesses are already on the AI adoption path, but only a third of them have actually mastered it. The other two-thirds are still at a very basic level of implementation, and the challenge isn’t getting started, it’s getting serious. Moving from a proof of concept that generates excitement in the boardroom to a production solution that actually changes how the business runs. That gap between prototype and production is the problem AWS Canada is trying to help its partners solve, and on June 2nd, the company formally launched its answer, the Partner Innovation Hub in Toronto. I was on site the day before the launch for a couple of conversations. First, I sat down with Martin Brazinet, head of technology at AWS Canada, who walked me through the vision behind the centre, why it’s built around partners and what success actually looks like. Then I spoke with Dinesh Bhavsar, director of AI, emerging technologies and innovation at CGI, one of the four launch partners, about what the space means for his clients and how he thinks about sparking curiosity with customers who may not yet know what questions to ask. Let’s get right into it, starting with my chat with Martin Brazinet. Thanks for taking the time, really appreciate it, especially on the eve of the centre going public and getting it launched out there.Martin Brazinet: Oh, thank you very much. It’s my pleasure to be here with you, Rob. Rob: For folks who aren’t familiar with the concept or haven’t heard it yet, can you kind of give us the elevator pitch, I guess, for the Partner Innovation Centre – what it is and why Toronto is the place for it? Martin Brazinet: Yeah, no, for sure, Rob. Every day my team is working with customers and helping customers adopt AI on a continuous basis. We see a lot of excitement from customers who wanted to get deeper into AI. I believe in terms of Canadian customers, there are 650,000 customers already in Canada that have adopted AI. But surprisingly, only about a third of them have really mastered AI – two-thirds of them are still at a very basic level of AI adoption. And we see that, and customers want to get some support on having a better understanding of how they can adopt AI at a more transformative level that touches their industry and touches their requirement. And the AWS Partner Innovation Hub is really there for that – to provide that space where we can see solutions in action, having an immersive environment where we can, with our partners, show some solutions that are transformative, an...