Powered by Digital Catapult and the Future Cities Catapult, IoTUK was today launched to support and advance the UK’s IoT capability.
The programme will run for three years and it has been designed to advance the UK’s global leadership in IoT, as well as to increase the adoption of high quality IoT technologies and services throughout businesses and the public sector.
Part of the Government’s £40m investment in IoT announced in March by Chancellor George Osborne, IoTUK will collaborate with organisations in a wide range of fields including cities, health and industrial applications.
The focus of the programme will be on enabling the UK’s businesses and public sector to make advances in creating their IoT capability, specifically in areas such as security and trust, data interoperability, investment justification and design development.
Maurizio Pilu, ?executive director for collaborative R&D at Digital Catapult, told CBR: "IoTUK will contribute significantly to giving the UK and edge in several ways, directly and indirectly, but ultimately I think the main contribution is about giving a jolt to the demand side.
"IoTUK will do so through large scale demonstrators which aim to become hotbeds of IoT innovation and business process/model experimentation, as well as being the amplifier of the UKs best in class examples of IoT at work, which will be done through regional acceleration activities, mapping and showcasing."
Pilu added that IoTUK will run specific initiatives to raise the profile of the UKs IoT scene to help drive adoption and promote new SME-led business propositions.
"This will be done by a combination of mapping and showcasing UK capacity and IoT success stories, supporting individual businesses in clinics and regional acceleration activities, and other initiatives, such as working with selected cities to model the economic impact of IoT deployments."
IoTUK has also launched a number of initiatives for organisations in the IoT sector to get involved, including the IoTUK’s Case Study Open Call to look at IoT projects that are implemented, and have delivered real, proven value for business and citizens.
The programme also includes a Showcase Open Call, which is looking for individuals to be a part of the physical showcase in the Digital Catapult and Future Catapult Centres, and a Boost Open Call, which is looking for organisations from across the UK to partner in order to deliver a series of local IoT innovation challenges and rapid incubation activities.
Pilu said: "We expect hundreds of businesses to be engaged and tangibly benefitting from the IoTUK activities, but in my view the biggest added value is the coordination of these activities under one umbrella, building focus and critical mass behind IoT."
Neil Crockett, CEO at Digital Catapult, said: "We are at a pivotal point in the evolution of the Internet of
Things and the UK is ready to maximise the huge potential of smart technology.
"This is about the combination of interoperability, AI and machine automation to create a game changer to the business models of every sector in the economy. The societal impact, from managing city infrastructure through to the delivery of our health and social services will be huge.
"To stay ahead the UK needs to be at the cusp of driving and gaining a new competitive edge from the fundamental technological changes that will happen in the next five years.
Reacting to the launch of IoTUK, Regina Moran, CEO at Fujitsu UK&I, said: "The launch of IoTUK is an exciting prospect and a great initiative to advance the UK’s IoT capabilities.
"It highlights the wealth of potential that IoT offers to revolutionise the delivery of existing digital services across the sectors, as well as unlock the potential for new ones and fuel the UK’s digital economy.
"The IoT has the potential to turn ideas in a hyper-connected world into fully realised digital services but it has challenges ahead and it’s encouraging to see the Government investing in its development."
