For all those following our Global Innovation Venture Partner Programme we are getting close to the final. We are delighted to announce our shortlist for 2012 made up of NeutrinoBI, 360Globalnet, miiCard, Dexter Intelligence, X88 Software Limited and Worksoft.

The team received a total of 53 nominations and the judges had a hard time choosing the shortlist. The companies were chosen for their innovation and capability to partner with Logica and bring innovation to our clients. The judging day is on Thursday, 23 August. The winner will be announced at the end of August.  More stuff on each company. 

Neutrino BI

Designed in 2007, NeutrinoBI has been developed to deliver the breakthrough Business Intelligence search and discovery capability for business professionals. NeutrinoBI for Desktop and Server environments take you from raw data to discovery in minutes. With its freeform search tool, it offers easy-to – use functionality and with an exceptional look and feel.

360 Globalnet

With 360Globalnet’s LinkUp you can hoover up every bit of data and text in the organisation, apply rules and algorithms, and display the results in any way you like.  This Business Intelligence solution provides sophisticated data matching, mining and visualisation in one tool. All data structured and real unstructured data in any format can be digested analysed and linked to provide a true holistic view of the enterprises information.

miiCard

miiCard's real-time online identity verification service allows a consumer to prove their real identity, to Anti-Money Laundering standards, without the need for a physical ID checks. Owned and managed by the individual having a miiCard allows people to track, monitor and thus take control of their online identity. For businesses selling online to consumers, miiCard improves conversion rates, cuts operational cost and fights internet fraud.

Dexter Intelligence

Founded in 2012 and identified during Logica’s Aspire Programme Dexter Intelligence offer data discovery services to businesses and government.

With a doctoral research DNA of intelligent information and social information seeking they can discover information in the mass of structured and unstructured data that companies and organisations hold. . They gather, index, theme and present data using their, unique and scalable tools for discovery.

X88 Software Limited

X88’s Pandora is a powerful data analysis and manipulation tool that can acquire, analyse, transform and export data and can produce data quality reports and transformation specifications. Pandora uses a database that allows it to ingest very large quantities of data and to manipulate this on screen almost instantaneously. The product is a self-contained, high-performance, multi-user application that can reduce the risk and timescales of your data-related projects by 80%

Worksoft

Tackling the complex and costly challenge of testing business technology applications Worksoft can help with their automated tested solution.  With their alternative object-based design the Worksoft Certify suite of Test products can quickly and easily get to work. With error rates dropping by as much as 80%, getting technology to do the bulk of the work this will save money whilst giving providing confidence and assurance your business processes are meeting your needs.   

We received an interesting mix of entrants from different parts of the world.  We are going to have an exciting day with the various next generation Big Data offerings. I didn't see as many Mobile and Business Platform entrants as I had hoped. That remains the challenge who will be the big winners when we are all mobile and bringing our own devices?

An Italian Job

As this year’s 100 Hottest European Start-ups from Wired showed there’s still a healthy Technology sector growth across the continent. They featured the Tech powerhouse cities of Berlin and London as well as some up and coming hubs in Barcelona and Amsterdam. Recently, I would have said that “one city that wouldn’t come to mind as a hotbed of innovation was Turin”. Well the Think Up Agency and partners at I3P and the Institute Mario Boella changed this. They have created a vibrant ecosystem of start-ups and focused research that are feeding off each to produce tangible technology capabilities and competencies.

If you are looking for design flair and technology backed up with delivery capability I would recommend the trip to investigate the city.  Here are some hot prospects in original home of the economic cluster model.

Founded in 1999, by a group of language technology researchers with the aim to address the growing market in language engineering, Celi is a provider of software solutions in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in mono-, multi-, and cross-language perspective.  When you add in the whole semantic analysis for business with parts the big data challenges we will to continue to face a very interesting offering.

Experientia is an experience design consultancy that practices user research-based and people-centred design. They operate at the front end of the process and help folks come up with their answers, through a qualitative understanding of people, their mental models and their behaviours.

BMooble is the vision of Guido Colombo who back in the day foresaw the concept of Apps as we know them today. bMooble provides a  solution specifically designed to access any Information Data Source from multi-platform mobile phone devices. Impressively, they seem to have all platform including you old Nokia (not so smart) phone covered.  With increasing mobility desires and the build once deploy many they are in for interesting times.

At first glance Synesthesia would be your typical mobile apps design team which springing up around the world. When you get under the covers you’ll find a decade long heritage in cutting edge design and mobile user experience expertise. Having developed the 2012 Olympics App which as an actual user I can say they have a ‘right to play’. They set a good benchmark for sports based Apps and I see the likes of Sky showing an interest.

The brainchild of a physics graduate with a history of Design Support Systems based on multidimensional engines Hicare Research was founded in 1996. The business intelligence software company have built a built their product Lilith. With its impressive functionality set, they look well placed to take advantage of the Big Data and Analytics challenges companies around the world are facing.

Founded in 2003, with 15 employees Seaco2 are a little bit like Layar with their mobile augmented-reality platform. They bring the deep heritage of Italian design credentials together with state of the art augmented reality software and real-time render raytracing to produce incredible interactive solutions. With their patents and copyrights as well as working for folks like UPS and Benetton they are one to watch.

Reply Concept is your more traditional business technology service company or systems integrator. Founded in 1996 and listed on the Italian Star in 2000 they provide consulting, systems integration and Apps Management.  They have neat stuff in the whole digital, mobile retail area with their HI Shop.

With an eight year history and over 20 years experience, Irion operate in the data quality and enterprise data management systems market. Their IrionDQ, which allows you to treat all your corporate data as if it were contained in a single, large virtual database maybe of interest to the Financial services industry as Regulators are setting new standards for Basle 3 and Solvency 2..  

Mediaki.it’s interesting formation can be traced back to the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin.  They are well placed to take advantage of the wave of new portals or business platforms as Internet users become savvier and businesses realise the need to offer and increasing encaging social experience.  

Keeping it fresh

A key part of my role is bringing our clients ideas to life and help answer the question “is there a better way?” Essentially I do this by working with Logica’s great people, our Innovation Ecosystem or a combination both.

When I say our Innovation Ecosystem, I mean our phenomenal collection of over 300 partners that ranges from universities who are looking at some whacky research to our global alliance partners at the other end with their incredible products and services. The majority fall in the middle and are mainly SMEs who have some cutting edge cool stuff. 

One of the ingredients we use to keep the ecosystem vibrant and fresh is our GIVP programme.  We’ll be announcing this year’s global winner in September so look out for that.

The Italian Job

I also proactively scout for potential additions to the ecosystem and it always amazes me where you find incredible hotspots of innovation. For an interesting view checkout Wired’s latest European hot 100. An example of this was a recent visit to Turin in Italy. I had always thought of Turin, as the home of Fiat with all its industrial connotations, but what I found with the help of the Think Up Agency was a vibrant hidden gem of innovation activity. 

I discovered a user-experience design agency with a different take on things, the Olympic 2012 mobile app designers, a natural language processing company that does the whole cross-language semantic piece.

Freshness takes work

The freshness and vibrancy of our Innovation Ecosystem really makes a difference to all, but you have to work at it and gems can be found in unexpected places.