The Cloud Innovation Centre

The Cloud Innovation Centre will apply the knowledge

and expertise developed within the world class Digital
Institute at Newcastle University to equip regional
organisations with the skills and tools necessary to
exploit the benefits of cloud technologies and data
analytics. In doing so, the Centre will act as an engine
for regional growth; accelerating skills improvement
through knowledge transfer; encouraging innovation
and new business creation through research and development; exploring real-time event processing
and acting as a test-bed for new applications and service delivery models.

Cloud Computing and Big data

Cloud computing is revolutionising IT from
both a technical and economic perspective by
offering massively scalable resources ondemand, enabling organisations to construct
radically different business and service delivery
models. Cloud technologies are also
fundamental to the growth of big data: the
large, often complex, datasets now being
created in almost all fields of activity, from
healthcare to e-commerce. Creating value
from raw data requires the development of
new scalable approaches to capturing, storing,
managing, analysing and visualizing largescale, complex and diverse data from multiple
sources. Unfortunately, due to a lack of
expertise, the benefits inherent in these
activities are rarely achieved outside the few
large companies who can afford the necessary
investment.

The Cloud Innovation Centre will engage with

innovative organisations in the private and

public sector to create new and highly skilled

jobs. The Centre is timely as UK industry faces
a huge skills gap in this area as the demand for
big data staff has risen exponentially (912%)
over the past five years from 400 advertised
vacancies in 2007 to almost 4,000 in 2012 (eskills UK, Jan 2013). In addition, the demand for
cloud and big data skills will continue to
outpace the demand for standard IT skills, with
big data vacancies forecast to increase by
around 18% per annum in comparison with
2.5% for IT. Over the next five years this
equates to a 92% rise in the demand for big
data skills with around 132K new jobs being
created in the UK (e-skills UK, Jan 2013).
The objectives are:

To improve knowledge and skills relating

to cloud technologies and big data
analytics across the region.

To drive innovation and new business

growth through knowledge transfer and
collaborative research.

To grow the research base and expertise

in specific application areas of cloud and
big data.

To be an international leader and a

geographical centre of excellence in cloud
technologies and big data analytics.

Why Newcastle University

Various national and international reports (and
notably the Witty Review) have highlighted the
need to exploit the eight great technologies
of which Big data and energy efficient
computing is one. Witty finds that Newcastle
University is a leader in big data (7th nationally)
and also notes the need for LEPs to invest in
areas of comparative economic advantage (as
a leader in big data Newcastle University
achieves its joint highest UK position).
Newcastle Universitys Digital Institute has:

won over 30M in research funding

related to this area
built a critical mass of research expertise
and a strong network of industrial
collaborators
won 1M from DCMS through Newcastle
City Council to invest in Cloud Centre
infrastructure
won matched 1M investment by
University in new space on Science Central
influenced Red Hat Inc (the worlds leading
Open Source company with a $10BN
market cap) to colocate the Red Hat
Research Centre at Newcastle University in
2010, one of only two such research
centres in the world.

organisations to encourage innovative

activity through knowledge transfer and
the sharing of best practice - building a
cluster
of
related
organisations,
encouraging start-ups and attracting
inward investment.
Engagement with Industry: commercial
concerns will drive closer to market
research initiatives. Industry driven needs
will
be
addressed
through
industry/academic research collaboration
using existing funding initiatives (e.g.
Technology
Strategy
Board)
and
knowledge transfer schemes. This will
drive innovative solutions to current
barriers that are preventing wider
adoption of cloud technologies and
services. Research will deliver improved
knowledge and embed valuable IP across
regional organisations enabling the North
East to build a critical mass of expertise in
this domain. Red Hat Incs investment in
Newcastle is a stand-out example of US
investment attracted to Newcastle
through innovative academic research and
spin-out activity.

The Vision
Our vision for the Cloud Innovation Centre is
for a collaborative space that brings world
leading knowledge and expertise to the region
to encourage innovation.

The Centre will include:

Collaborative space: co-location of the

University research group with private
office space for industry and public sector

Engagement with Public Sector: the

Centre will work with the local public
sector to enable it to exploit the
opportunities cloud computing provides.
As central government places more
demands on regional authorities to
embrace cloud related services there is a
danger that regional public sector IT jobs
will be lost if opportunities are ignored. By
embracing the benefits of cloud and
extracting the value from data, jobs will be
retained, skills will be improved and the
public sector will be better able to deliver
higher quality services at lower cost.