News
Cloud computing development given huge funding boost to help make SMEs more competitive
March 2017 by Marc Jacob
Despite Brexit, the Europe-wide UK-led movement to develop more secure and flexible cloud computing technologies at the level of application has been given a big boost in form of a €4.2 million research grant. The project will make it possible for European small and medium sized business (SMEs) and public organisations to benefit from cutting-edge scalable cloud computing technologies making them more competitive on a global stage.
The project, funded by the European Commission, the Swiss government and other companies, will be led by the Research Centre for Parallel Computing at the University of Westminster in London which has been on the forefront of parallel computing research in Europe for over a decade.
The 2.5-year long project called COLA – Cloud Orchestration at the Level of Application - will improve competitiveness by helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and public organisations to upscale their ability to work with large amounts of data in a secure and flexible way.
The work is conducted with partners from six European countries - ten SMEs and four academic institutions including the University of Westminster, Brunel University London, the Swedish Institute for Computer Science, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
The COLA project is being led by Dr Tamas Kiss, Reader in Distributed Computing and Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Parallel Computing at the University of Westminster, and will run until the 30th of June 2019.
The practical uses of the new technology will, amongst others, include helping the local government in the region of Aragon, Spain, to use tweets to identify the most talked-about local tourist attractions which will help attract more visitors boosting the local tourist industry; a UK-based simulation consultant company Saker Solutions will be enabled to build complex evacuation models for public places or buildings; and UK web app developer Outlandish LLP will be able to help its customers including the BBC, the British Council and the Audience Agency by developing more flexible, secure and adaptive web applications.
Principal investigator Dr Tamas Kiss said: “The COLA project grant is a significant boost for our Research Centre. It will enable us not only to carry on with our research activities in cloud computing technologies but will also prove that these advances result in tremendous economic gain for companies and the public sector, making these organisations more competitive on a global scale. Working as part of a European collaboration is absolutely crucial as this significantly widens the scale of expertise and technology we can rely on. As the UK leaves the European Union it is especially important that we remain an integral part and play leading roles in such collaborations.”
The COLA project builds on the previous success of an EU funded research project also led by Dr Tamas Kiss called CloudSME – Cloud based Simulation for Manufacturing and Engineering. For example, CloudSME developed, an optimised solution for small UK breweries looking for better production and distribution strategies, enabling them to provide the highest possible quality beer to pubs and prevent beer waste.
