The showcase presentations at the 2008 forum will be delivered by some of the most exciting fast growth technology firms in the UK. Below is a sample of the 40 or so companies that will be showcasing their products and services. These companies have successfully passed a selection procedure via the Technology Advisory Board.
If you would like to receive further details about getting involved in the showcase, please contact Rob McGowan at
Click on the companies below to view Showcase company profiles.
2e2 is an IT managed services and solutions provider. We have some of the best people in the industry – and we can make your IT deliver real advantages for your business.
From a simple infrastructure deployment to a complex global ERP system, we have the skills and experience to get results. And if you’d rather focus on your business than your IT, we may be able to help with our suite of managed services.
We’re pretty unique as well. We’re big enough to have the deep skills and resources you need across your entire IT estate but small enough to really care about your business and make things happen quickly. When you combine our unrivalled technical expertise and deep vendor relationships, it’s easy to see why so many organizations large and small trust 2e2 as their strategic IT partner.
AdJug is an online ad marketplace. It connects buyers and sellers of online advertising.
Publishers use AdJug as a sales tool to access media buyers directly. Advertisers can run bespoke ad campaigns by choosing the sites they appear on and deciding how much they pay. AdJug allows publishers to increase their yield while advertisers are able to run better performing ad campaigns.
The system offers advertisers and publishers complete visibility, control & choice which allows both parties to buy & sell ads with confidence.
allfiled offers a secure home filing service that’s intuitive and simple to use, providing essential services for the user and multiple revenue streams for allfiled and its partners.
Two years of dedication and investment led to launch in September 2007. Today allfiled has 1000 users and is supported by blue chip organisations.
It’s accessible 24/7 anywhere with internet access, making it invaluable at point of need. The service offers consumers a way of getting organised and making household admin useful, offering tools that can help save time and money.
ATEEDA provides EDA tools and services for testing electronic devices during manufacture in the mixed signal semiconductor industry.
ATEEDA’s highly experienced management team includes Peter Denyer (founded, floated and sold Vision group, founded Microemissive Displays) and Bill Buckie and Jane Karwoski McCracken (worked with numerous high-tech, high growth start-ups) and CEO David Hamilton (25 years in electronics sector, led Vibtech technical development).
We work closely with blue chip multinational Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs). We cut mixed signal test costs and improve yield and reliability using our disruptive technology embodied in our proprietary Electronic Design Automation (EDA) test tool, OptimATE.
OptimATE is readily integrated into our customers' Design Tool Flow and our partnerships with major EDA tool vendors ensure interoperability with their products. OptimATE’s unique patented algorithms allow analogue circuitry to be tested faster, cheaper and with better defined coverage using lower specification digital automatic test equipment than previous approaches saving $ms pa per product.
Azellon Ltd is a Bristol University spin-out company. Azellon was incorporated in December 2007 and has a technology that combines cutting edge science in a vast market with no real treatment alternatives.
Azellon has demonstrated in-vitro that adult human stem cells can be encouraged to join the two sides of an avascular meniscal cartilage tear. Azellon is developing a cell-bandage which will be sutured into the meniscus tear, to close the gap/tear without removing any tissue. This technology is unique, novel and inventive and represents a departure from the current therapeutic paradigm, helping Azellon to secure IP rights.
Ceram Polymerik is an advanced materials company with patented ceramifying polymer technology. Our inorganic additive blends enable functional plastic articles to seamlessly transform into a cohesive, self-supporting and dimensional stable ceramic during a fire, providing a protective barrier to the movement of heat, smoke and toxic gases. This offers cost-effective and technically superior solutions for existing and emerging applications in the Passive Fire Protection (“PFP”) market.
Examples include:
The technology is covered by four existing patents that are at various stages of national filing in 35 countries. A further provisional patent is moving into PCT stage in April 2008.
CereProc (short for 'Cerebral Processing') was founded in late 2005 by speech synthesis expert Dr Matthew Aylett, and Nick Wright of the Edinburgh-Stanford Link speech research fund. They made the decision after lamenting the lack of innovation by speech technology companies around the world.
The pair realised that the latest advances in speech synthesis now meant artificial voices could not only be made to sound 'real', but could also be built quickly and cost effectively. If a company could harness these developments, it could create a range of voices for a whole new era of exciting applications. Finally, when combined with major advances in speech recognition, a number of killer applications, long talked about but never realised, could finally become a reality.
Codilink is a new media company that provides technology platforms to advertising agencies and blue chip brands. Its main product focus is on coupon, ticket and loyalty card distribution and redemption, providing a method to eradicate the current paper trail required for coupon reconciliation.
By issuing unique two-dimensional barcodes as coupons via any medium (paper, email or mobile phone), redeeming them via low-cost hardware installed in the point of sale, and performing all reconciliation and payments to merchants, Codilink is becoming the world’s first digital coupon clearing house.
Codilink offers a range of different point of sale terminal options, from stand-alone GPRS connected readers to fully integrated EPOS solutions, all of which require minimal investment in hardware.
To date Codilink has issued over 25 million coupons, tickets and loyalty cards, and has over 3,000 installed readers operating across a range of different outlets.
Consilico is a leading provider of Energy Performance Management Solutions (EPM). We have an enviable product and solution portfolio that is desgined to fit in with any organisations needs. This allows our clients to reduce their carbon footprint, utility expenditure and allows them to concentrate on running their business.
We are an Independent Solutions Provider, we are not tied to a single product or service, this means that we can offer clients what they need, whether it be a full end-to-end Smart Metering solution or just an advanced Energy Analytics Application (M&T).
C-Wave is a privately owned company, based at the University of Southampton, developing an innovative wave energy technology. C-Wave technology delivers significant cost and operating advantages over alternative wave power systems, and is capable of withstanding the impact of our oceans storms. It will be used for utility scale power generation wave farms positioned offshore, minimising the impact on the marine and onshore environment.
e-stack Ltd provides unique expertise to design teams in the modelling of airflows through buildings by using laboratory analogue models, dynamic thermal modelling and computational fluid dynamics. The design consultancy service enables design teams to create buildings which are thermally comfortable year-round and which use significantly less energy than other buildings.
e-stack Ltd also provides ventilation equipment for buildings to contractors. The equipment is derived from a University of Cambridge owned patent to which e-stack has an exclusive license. Modern buildings typically have excess heat gains relative to that needed to maintain comfortable internal temperatures and an adequate supply of fresh air. Rather than using conventional heating systems to pre-heat the incoming cold air, the e-stack system uses the internal heat gains by mixing the fresh air with the internal air, before it reaches the occupants. Using this strategy, the energy consumption of naturally ventilated buildings can be reduced by a factor of two, and hence represents a considerable opportunity for improvements in energy efficiency of the built environment.
Handmade Mobile Entertainment Ltd (Handmade) provides consumer applications for mobile phones and aims to capitalise on the shift in value creation in mobile data services from the corporate to the consumer market.
Handmade’s first commercial service is Flirtomatic, an entertainment service that is available on mobile phones and over the web. It allows people to write a profile (including photo), match their profile by searching against others, and write and receive messages.
Flirtomatic is available on most WAP colour phones, and on some JAVA phones. Clients can use it on their mobile phone, the web or both. The objective is to quickly and easily see who is out there, send and receive flirty messages, and chat live.
H2Optiflow Ltd addresses water waste and resource depletion, whilst accelerating and promoting the growth of target crops and plants.
H2Optiflow can help eliminate water ‘Bans’ and promote water solutions. Help solve Carbon-Unfriendly Manufacturing and provide an alternative to the failure of plastic to perform in irrigation thus provide a potential solution to 3rd World Irrigation Dilemmas.
H2Optiflow is an irrigation device to be sold as a basic unit in any gardening shop or as part of a large irrigation project. H2Optiflow is wholly biodegradable.
InforSense provides a Platform for building and delivering Business intelligence to all users in an enterprise by embedding analytics into your business processes.
InforSense goes beyond traditional analytics companies by focusing on embedding analytics so that your BI 2.0 or High-Throughput Informatics strategy can benefit from:
InforSense Ltd is a private company based in London, UK with US offices in Cambridge, MA. It was founded in 1999 to exploit commercially pioneering, award-winning technology in the fields of High Performance Computing and Large Scale Data Mining, developed at one of the world's leading science and technology universities, Imperial College, London. The company’s core expertise lies in the development of a generic, horizontal platform for delivering enterprise business intelligence in agile, visual, predictive and real-time fashion. This platform enables organizations to integrate data sources, information and analysis tools, and also to capture and orchestrate their decision-making processes to deliver improved productivity.
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Instant Discounts Limited (IDL) was founded in 1997 by the current CEO and MD. It is a leading-edge technology company supplying electronic customer retention and payment terminal solutions to retailers and businesses throughout the UK.
IDL was the first company to launch customer loyalty, discount and voucher redemption applications on an electronic payment terminal.
Based just outside in Harrow , IDL is an entrepreneurial and progressive organisation. IDL is committed to continually developing revolutionary electronic Point of Sale customer retention and payment solution technology innovations.
Retailers use IDL’s EFTPoS technology and customer loyalty and retention applications to improve their marketing programmes and increase sales revenues and improve customer visit frequency.
Intelligent Energy owns an extremely highly regarded and patented PEM fuel cell technology portfolio that creates ‘clean power’ for use in the aerospace, defence, motive, material handling and distributed generation sectors and has the technology to source ‘clean fuel’ without recourse to a ‘hydrogen economy.’
Intelligent Energy’s proprietary proton exchange membrane (PEM) high density fuel cells offer competitive advantage in that they are modular and scaleable, capable of powering a lap top, a motorcycle, a car, an unmanned aerial vehicle or a telecommunications mast, to name but a few.
LOVEFiLM International Ltd is Europe’s fastest growing home entertainment subscription service, including online DVD rental and digital download services offering value, choice and convenience. The company operates in the UK (www.lovefilm.com), in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany. The business rents over 2.5 million DVDs per month representing over 25 per cent of the DVD rental market.
LOVEFiLM carries more than 65,000 unique titles available on DVD, as well as a Video-on-demand (VoD) service. In December 2005, we launched the first UK mass market movie download service to UK members. Customers can now download-to-rent or download-to-own nearly 2,000 titles ranging from short films to full length feature films across major Hollywood studios. Customers can also rent games, visit the LOVEFiLM Shop, buy cinema tickets, and search cinema listings.
MIMIV is the owner of a portfolio of granted patents which cover a functional electronic materials technology platform providing disruptive materials and process technologies for application in flat panel displays, photovoltaics, flat lamps and nano-electronics.
MIMIV’s pFED (printable Field Emission Display) offers better viewing quality, lower manufacturing cost and significantly lower power consumption when compared to current LCD and plasma TV technologies. The pFED materials are formulated as screen printable inks which form the basis of the pFED flat screen TV.
MoBank is a convenient and trustworthy service allowing customers to make day-to-day transactions and administering their personal finances any time, any place and from any Internet connected device (mobile or fixed). Founded by First Direct and Egg veterans, MoBank is bringing mobile payments to the masses just as Egg introduced online banking to millions of UK consumers.
The founders of MoBank saw an opportunity to create an alternative choice for younger consumers who view the incumbent banks as being toxic and out of touch with their lifestyles. Mobile-led services are particularly attractive to these consumers and have the potential to disrupt the whole financial services and retail payments landscape over the next five years.
After 3 years of research, Netcat , Australia’s largest Web Content Management Software (WCM) company, has launched SWIPE (Simple Website Import & Processing Engine), its unique Web 2.0 software that allows everyday users to auto-generate fully navigable mini-websites from large desktop-formatted documents (or folios of documents) and vice versa.
A 500 page policy manual can be converted into a fully navigable website in around 10 minutes!
Prior to SWIPE, users wishing to publish to the web would convert Word documents into PDF format – a bandwidth-heavy approach that treated the entire Word document as a single encapsulated item. Authors initiating changes had to republish the entire document and readers wanting a single section were forced to consume the whole publication.
In contrast, SWIPE fragments documents into chunks or objects of information using a sophisticated rules engine and transforms them into web format allowing them to be repurposed, collaborated on, personalised or auto-linked to any other content. Users need only consume the relevant part of the website (document). As the process works in reverse, SWIPE delivers true bi-directional transformation of content between the desktop and the web.
If you can envisage a world, in which the mobile media environment is as familiar as your own living room, where being creative doesn’t mean being stuck at a PC, where your access to media content is infinitely extensive and not limited by the stuff you have remembered to side load into your media player. Then you can share our Network eXtended Vision.
In essence, our solution enables digital television stakeholders to offer service to their viewers that empower them to watch their favourite TV programmes: WHEN they want to and WHERE they want to. The solution extends the familiar living room TV experience to all mobile devices, beyond the primitive first generation pioneering place-shifting products, by providing a seamless experience for the consumer whilst maintaining complete copyright control for the content owner. The company offering is business to business to consumer (B-B-C) that rewards everyone in the content delivery chain.
ObjectSecurity is a Cambridge, UK (with San Jose, CA, USA representative) based specialist for "Model Driven Security", a concept that that simplifies security policy management in large, networked IT environments. Model Driven Security is an important emerging area identified by Gartner on the Hype Cycle for Information Security (maximum impact in 5-10 years).
ObjectSecurity has been identified as one of a handful of sample vendors in this area. The product is called OpenPMF 2.0 (Open Policy Management Framework). It is the first generic implementation of Model Driven Security on the market, and interest by large end-users (e.g. airports, air traffic control, Ministry of Defence, systems integrators) is significant.
In addition to the dramatic reduction of the security management complexity, OpenPMF is currently also the only solution in the market that allows the low-maintenance security management of dynamically evolving IT environments ("agile" Service Oriented Architectures, SOA) and for automatic security for model-based software development. A patent has been filed in 2007.
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Omnifone is Europe's leading direct-to-mobile unlimited music download service provider. Partners include Vodafone, Telenor, 3 Hong Kong and Vodacom, all of whom have rolled out Omnifone's revolutionary subscription based mobile music service MusicStation, providing unlimited downloads direct to a wide range of industry standard music enabled handsets for a small weekly fee or bundled into price plans.
Omnifone has 30 Mobile Network Operators engaged as MusicStation partners across Europe, Asia Pacific and Africa and has international licence agreements with all four major labels and many independents.
At Pingar, we believe passionately that valuable research content (analyst reports, business data etc) should be freely and widely available online. We therefore aggregate this data, providing customised reports to users and sharing advertising revenue with content owners.
Pingar’s technology platform:
Pingar has already made great progress – its beta portal is embedded into Microsoft Office 2007 and IE 7. It works closely with Microsoft, along with strategic partners FAST and GlobalGraphics, to develop custom solutions for corporate clients.
PrecisionPoint Software is a UK based independent software developer that produces a patent-pending software product which generates the worlds most complete Business Warehouse (data warehouse). Its initial target market is the Microsoft Dynamics mid-market ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) installed base of well over one million end user desktops worldwide.
Mid-market companies are data rich but information poor because they cannot afford the Business Intelligence (BI) systems common in large companies. However PrecisionPoint brings BI to these companies by automating the BI build process reducing the cost by a factor of up to 10 and reducing the implementation time from 6-18 months to just a few days. PrecisionPoint has also developed remote support software which monitors system integrity and performance at each customer site daily via the Internet ensuring that customers always work from up to date, verified and reconciled numbers.
quietrevolution aims to be the leading supplier of small wind energy solutions for the built environment. quietrevolution has developed the QR range of vertical-axis wind turbines, designed to optimise energy output within its target application of distributed generation, with minimum visual and acoustic pollution. The company is currently manufacturing in Wales and installing across the UK.
quietrevolution has a strong sales pipeline to construction and corporate customers in the UK, has enquiries from all over the world, and is beginning to plan expansion to other key territories through partnerships with manufacturing partners and installers. The company is also working on large versions of its core product, and versions for integration in landmark architectural projects around the world, working with leading architects and developers. Currently the ‘brand leader’ in its core market, the company intends to extend its lead by providing the best technology, design, customer service, and market share, protected by strong IP and knowhow.
Having recognised the growing concern over the environmental damage caused by the IT industry, Kelly Smith, managing director and co-founder of Centrinet, decided to create what was to become the UK’s first zero-carbon data centre, Smartbunker.
Following the purchase of a 30,000 square feet ex-NATO nuclear bunker located 30 metres under the Lincolnshire countryside, Smartbunker was launched in the summer of 2007 to provide enterprise class managed server hosting, while minimising its own environmental impact.
From the outset, one of Kelly’s main goals was to reduce the power used by the facility, requiring a fresh look at the way the data centre industry specifies and implements IT infrastructure. Unlike established data centres with energy-inefficient infrastructure, Smartbunker had no limitations on the types of products it could specify.
In a market facing rapid transition, Streamburst is an idea-driven company pioneering methods to strengthen the triangular relationship between content providers, new media technology and the consumer.
The lack of simple, legitimate media download solutions for the consumer in recent years has resulted in the mass market demand turning towards casual piracy as the only alternative.
Streamburst's mission is to provide solutions that help convert casual pirates back into paying customers.
Streamburst operates a business model that leverages fan based viral affiliate distribution. Streamburst’s distributed web strategy is achieved via a de-centralised network of customisable ‘Digital Vending Machine’ (DVM) widgets that can be deployed to websites, blogs and social networking websites including Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. For the content owner consumer reach is greatly increased and in return the fan earns a commission on anything sold through the DVM they install.
Streamburst has pioneered simple, robust and practical anti-piracy methods that provide convenience and flexibility to the customer, restoring the customer’s trust in content producers, while still providing strong protection of content rights. It has an alternative approach to DRM using digital watermarking to uniquely identify each video, rather than prevent copying.
TagText is a new mobile/web service aimed at the youth market. The service works by allowing a user to select a digital character from a huge and continuously updated range of choices, dress it up in different clothes and put it into different poses before sending it together with a message to anyone on their phone or pc.
Kids love to express themselves through digital content, for example, using themes, pictures and smileys on MSN, decorating a Bebo page or dressing up avatars on Stardoll. On mobile, kids desire to personalise their phones using ring tones, ring-back tones and wallpapers has created a multi-billion dollar industry. Kids also love to communicate with their peers via text based means, witness the growth of text messaging and the explosion in the use of Instant Messenger.
The TagText service will tap into these dual desires, offering a way for kids to communicate creatively, providing an engaging new form of digital content and allowing them to express themselves, their moods and passions directly within their peer to peer messaging.
Textic Ltd is a privately owned and funded computer software company based in the Thames Valley that specialises in the development, marketing and selling of advanced, assistive and creative internet and mobile technologies. The main manifestation of this is Talklets, which, in real time, with minimal latency, converts web and mobile phone text to clear, human-like speech in a range of voices and languages.
Using a ‘software as a service’ approach, Talklets is easily integrated into any web page and can be deployed using a standard toolbar control interface or a flexible API approach to deliver text vocalisation.
Truphone is the mobile operator for the internet age, developing and marketing mobile internet telephony services.
Operating in over 50 countries, Truphone enables customers to make free and low-cost VoIP calls on their cellular phone, delivered by means of Wi-Fi and 3G rather than traditional GSM mobile networks. Truphone is great for overseas travellers because they can call at low cost, internet rates to any location when they are online - whether from hotels, airports, or cafes.
The service is presently in beta and offers Voice- and SMS-over-IP capabilities on Nokia handsets. The beta voice service was announced in 2006, when Truphone became the first company to introduce true internet telephony for mass market mobiles.
Ubiquisys pioneered the development of femtocell technologies and is recognised as market leader worldwide. Femtocells are small consumer devices the size of a paperback book that connect to the home broadband connection. Mobile users benefit from excellent, high-speed 3G coverage using their existing handset, as well as low-cost voice and data services in the home. Femtocells also allow operators to more effectively bundle mobile and fixed broadband services, and to differentiate themselves by offering a new generation of web 2.0 mobile applications based on home presence and sharing data with the home network.
Ubiquisys was formed in 2004 to bring its ground-breaking ZoneGate femtocell technology to market. ZoneGate femtocells are manufactured by Sony Technium and are available as standalone units or as part of a residential gateway device such as Netgear’s DVG834GH. The system supports multiple interfaces to the operator’s core network, and is remotely managed and updated using standard TR-069 management systems such as Motive’s Home Device manager. Ubiquisys’ sole focus is femtocells, and in 2007 it created the Femtoforum to promote standards and partnerships in this fast-emerging industry. The company is funded by T-Mobile Venture Fund, Accel Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Venture and Google.
Vizeye is a new company from Warwick University, which is concentrating on advanced optical instruments. Years of research at the University in association with Warwick Hospital has resulted in its first product, which will be a low cost digital ophthalmoscope (the instrument for inspecting the retina of the eye). Retinal inspections are of great importance for diagnosing conditions such as glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration, many of which can cause blindness.
The traditional instrument, which has not changed dramatically in the last 100 years, has no means of recording the view, leading to inadequate diagnoses, wasted clinical time and negative medical outcomes. Nonetheless, it is regularly used by over 20,000 medical professionals in the UK, and up to 500,000 worldwide. Our new instrument will incorporate modern camera electronics, advanced optics and specialist software, yet can be sold at price that every doctor and optician can afford. Initial response from the potential customers has been excellent.
VoxIQ is an enabling technology that combines speech technology with databases, which may be static (updated on a periodic basis), or dynamic (updated on an ongoing real-time basis), using Knowledge Based System (KBS) techniques. At the present time, no other product exists that merges these two tried and tested technologies. The VoxIQ invention uses the KBS techniques to decide the limited set of keywords that the speech recognition (SR) engine must recognise at any one time. The product will be a suite of software, sold under licence, which software application developers can integrate into their products and existing databases.
A VoxIQ equipped system listens to a conversation and, by detecting key words; it establishes and maintains knowledge of the context of the conversation as it evolves. From this knowledge, the system can access existing application databases and display relevant information to allow the user to talk in greater depth on the subject and to ensure that the information displayed and Keywords being sought are always relevant.
Warwick Effect Polymers is an innovative polymer synthesis company. It was founded in 2001 as a spin-out from the Chemistry Department of The University of Warwick. Its technology is based on the internationally recognised work of Professor David Haddleton in the field of polymer chemistry.
Warwick Effect Polymers is exploiting Living Radical Polymerisation to produce novel polymers under commercially viable conditions for the biosciences, materials and specialty chemicals industries. This technology is a new method which allows the controlled production of a variety of polymers with substantially more complex architectures and a wider range of properties than is possible with conventional polymerisation methods.
Webjam is the next generation tool in social publishing, allowing any individual, organisation or corporation to give a sense of purpose to their online connections and create a relevant and personalised online presence for their groups and communities. Webjam is the solution of choice for local communities, interest groups, charities, fan clubs or families who want to easily connect online and share content in a controlled and safe environment.
Webjam offers an innovative blend of social networking and publishing functionalities: powerful community features, an easy drag-and-drop interface and a rich catalogue of modules and styles. Relying on a technology of AJAX-based lightboxes, Webjam lets users edit each element of their page in context, i.e. without leaving the page, making the whole experience easy and enjoyable for all users, regardless of technical skills.
Additionally, Webjam offers a unique feature to let users share what they publish, by replicating contents, styles, widgets and lay-outs, or even entire sites, creating thus an open community and an ideal ecosystem for publishers, advertisers and developers.
Wind Technologies was founded to bring to market a new generation of electrical generator systems for the wind turbine industry. The new technology, through offering high reliability and low capital and maintenance costs, will significantly contribute to the wider adoption of wind power generation. The technology promises significant applications in a wide spectrum of wind turbines, from micro wind systems for domestic power generation, up to multi-megawatt turbines for on and off shore developments.
Wind Technologies’ products are based on its portfolio of patented and proprietary technologies including brushless doubly-fed generators and associated control systems. The company, founded in November 2006, is a spinout from the Engineering Department, University of Cambridge and is based in St Johns Innovation Centre, Cambridge, UK. A world-class team has been assembled, including academics and industrialists with experience in electrical industries and technology commercialisation, to exploit the technology.
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