ICT Digital is a booming industry in Edmonton, with specialties in NANO, MEMS, and Machine Intelligence. Growth will favour those investors and businesses that can utilize Edmonton's expertise and assets to accelerate innovation and product development.
Edmonton has facilities and networks to support growth in high-tech industries, especially in Nanotechnology, Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence.
Facilities in the region include: Alberta Centre for Advanced Microsystems and Nanotechnology Products (ACAMP), Alberta Machine Learning Institute (AMII), Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta, NanoFAB Centre, and National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT).
Edmonton has easy access to major ICT hubs in North America with direct flights to Denver, Houston, and Seattle. In addition, the city is in Mountain Standard Time making it an ideal location when connecting to both the working hours in the east and west coasts.
ICT labour costs are lower in Edmonton than major ICT markets in the USA.
Edmonton currently has the lowest downtown office average asking rental rate in major western Canadian cities, and is the second most competitive in major centres across the country. These rates are expected to become even more competitive with the significant amount of new square footage coming into the market.
Tax credits are available for those interested in investing in the ICT sector as well as those interested in research and development activities for ICT.
Edmonton's emerging Innovation Hub is a collaborative, cutting-edge ecosystem for companies invested and growing in the ICT digital space.
Over time, I’ve come to appreciate that we have very skilled people coming through our schools and we can sell good, quality people on our unique work culture. We are fighting with Google and Facebook for some of the computing science and engineering grads, and we compete for applied math students with the oil and gas sector, but a lot of these talented young people want to try something different. We play hard on weekends, but when the sun goes down at 4pm there are still people working. There is a strong work ethic, a loyalty, and high productivity with the people who work here.
Daniel Haight, Darkhorse Analytics Co-Founder
KPMG's 2016 Competitive Alternatives report ranks Edmonton in 4th place for business cost competitiveness in the digital services sector among the 14 selected cluster cities (chosen by KPMG for their prominent or emerging presence in the sector), ahead of San Francisco, Austin, Denver, and Calgary. The report examines 26 individual factors that generally represented between 35 and 90% of total operating costs for the business operations.
In their Labour Market Outlook 2015-2019, the Information and Communications Technology Council predicts that Alberta will have to fill 17,300 ICT positions over that time period.
