“The ICT industry is critical to Europe’s future both as a major industrial sector in its own right and as a driver of productivity and improved service quality in virtually all other industrial sectors... The competitive challenge is sharper still in the face of a new wave of technological change and market opportunities, which carry the potential to reshape the industry and the ways in which its products and services are used.”
EU ICT Task Force Report, November 2006
There are strong computer science departments at Warwick and Birmingham universities (the latter with an internationally prominent capability in artificial intelligence) and several global ICT companies sited in the region, including IBM, Oracle, Fujitsu, AT&T, Ricoh, Ericsson (formerly Marconi) and a small number of pioneering firms driving innovation in the security sector.
A photonics cluster worth £1.4bn has been built around advanced R&D facilities at Aston Science Park and key research strengths include QinetiQ’s operation at Malvern.
Ericsson are to create a £60m R&D facility near Coventry there is also a significant research capability in mobile and wireless technologies, including the growth market of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).
Achievements
• Cercia exploits cutting edge research and has achieved world recognition in Natural Computation at the University of Birmingham.
• IT Futures has assisted in excess of 100 businesses to adopt e-business, generating £5.4m extra sales and 573 jobs.
• Open Advantage has helped over 1000 businesses and individuals to understand the business benefits of Open Source software, resulting in a cluster of innovative companies.
• Photonics Cluster (UK) has successfully completed projects with over 600 companies and has leveraged funding in excess of £4million.
• WMita has evolved into UKita, a national association of IT businesses with 18 regional branches across the UK.
• AccredIT UK is a quality standard designed to help ICT suppliers prove their competence.
• West Midlands Mobile & Wireless is helping Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to adopt mobile and wireless technology to improve their profitability.
• iCentrum offers SMEs a solution development laboratory to test, develop and evaluate products in a clean environment and assesses the viability of products.
Target Markets 2008 - 11
The cluster will address two principal markets and develop a number of emerging markets.
Principal markets:
• Strategic ICT Adoption - the provision of ICT services and products which enable businesses to become more productive and profitable through aligning ICT investment with their business strategy.
• Software Development – businesses utilising vendor or open source software to create bespoke and tailored software for clients or products for niche markets.
Emerging markets:
• ICT security – relating to centralised information and data.
• Informatics – identifying patterns of behaviour for commercial opportunity.
• Mobile & Wireless – providing key infrastructure support, enabling business diversification and enhancing quality of life.
• Photonics – a separate Photonics strategy is currently under development.
• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) – exploits the growing need to track objects and people and offers opportunities particularly in logistics and the health industries.