Sunderland Software City

The Technology Strategy Board is investing up to £4m in a competition to stimulate development of an open application and services ecosystem in the Internet of Things (IoT). It follows the successful outcome of preparatory studies earlier this year.

The Internet of Things – the trend for environments and objects to become more connected and to have more information associated with them – has the potential to stimulate large scale investment, create jobs and bring substantial economic growth. 

For Phase 1 of the demonstrator the TSB have allocated up to £2.4m and are awarding up to £800k each to consortia to carry out 12-month projects funded at 100% of eligible costs. A further £1.6m is available in the second phase for scaling up the demonstrator.

In Phase 1 the TSB are asking consortia to develop Internet of Things clusters. These clusters can be described as real world scenarios, which include stakeholders with problems to be solved, application developers, owners of data streams from physical ‘things’ and technology businesses who can make this data available and usable via open information hubs.

The competition, which is open to any business-led consortium, opens on 15th October and is in two stages (Expression of Interest followed by full submission). The deadline for registration is  noon on 14th November and full proposals should be received by noon on 30th January 2013. Applicants should expect to start their projects no later than 1st April 2013.

Interested in Applying?
The brief for the competition is downloadable from the TSB website here.

A dedicated competition forum has been set up on _connect with more information and links.

The IoT Special Interest Group will be holding the two main consortia building event for the competition on:

18th October - London

24th October - Manchester

The formal briefing webinar will be held on 19th October - more details to follow on the dedicated competition forum.