Metronet, DiscoveryPlace.com, etc. [Previous ¦ Next]
Calgary was decidedly a hotbed of petroleum computing: over 500 energy companies crammed into a 10 square block of downtown with an comprehensive set of local data available from one government agency. That did not escape the attention of another agency, the then Alberta Government Telephone: they laid down optical fiber in most buildings for free, as a loss-leader to collect transaction fees among linked energy companies and data and software vendors. The bargain paid off as there rapidly emerged the largest WAN (wide-area network), coinciding with the advent of client-server hardware environment and open standard databases like Oracle.
The Metronet as that WAN was called, fostered other ventures but luck was running out. Fujitsu installed a large parallel supercomputer to help energy companies outsource very large data transaction processes, but that never flew. A precursor to portals was Discovery Place launched by another agency, the Alberta Research Council. It failed ironically because the optically wired city was actually slower in espousing the internet and its portals - what compelling reason had anyone to access abroad what already existed at home?
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