Waterloo's Sandvine to get up to $15 million from provincial fund

Waterloo-based Sandvine will be getting a grant of up to $15 million dollars from the province's Jobs and Prosperity Fund, Premier Kathleen Wynne announced Wednesday.

The money will help the company invest in a $169 million research and development project that will work on cloud-based computing networking and will create or retain up to 350 jobs, the premier said.

The company will hire 75 new employees and retain 267 existing jobs, according to Sandvine, and some of that hiring has already begun.

Sandvine generates 85 per cent of its revenue from exporting technology, a press release from the province stated, making it an important part of diversifying the province's economy.

The funding will help Sandvine expand into network function virtualization, products that will run on cloud-based services. That means clients who use Sandvine products can use new networking services quickly because of the cloud and adapt to large-scale needs quickly, the release said.