This presentation outlines how digital agency, and Azure specialist, Sequence, worked with Storm to leverage the benefits of Azure, and in doing so how the brought a new lease of life to the Storm models web application real estate. Richard will outline how Storm use digital as part of their business, the challenges they faced in migrating a legacy platform, how Sequence made use of the Azure toolset and...

In the field of cancer detection, prevention and treatment, new ideas are helping to save lives and to improve quality of life during and following treatment. Ideas Matter hosted an impressive event on 14 May in London, during Cancer Prevention Week in the UK, to present some innovative technologies that are making a difference in the battle against cancer, and to ask innovators to describe how...

This month, we celebrate the success of a small Dutch start-up named Atomblock that has recently evolved and become a division of a much larger European company named ALSO.  Atomblock is now called ALSO Digital.  It is a cloud-based infrastructure company that helps game publishers, software publishers and retailers to sell their products on a global scale – in other words, providing a cloud...

It’s exciting enough when we hear about developers taking existing apps and putting them on our new Windows 8 platform, but it’s even more exciting when it’s a brand new app that is breaking new ground – and in children’s education. Infantium is one of a number of W8 apps being developed by innovators and entrepreneurs in Spain. CEO and co-founder Karen Marquez tells us about...

The mis-predicted Mayan apocalypse behind us, 2013 has brought renewed hope to Europe. There is a sense that the worst is behind us, a near-death experience in the more than half a century old European project has been averted, just. The Euro is back as one of the world’s most favoured currencies and the European Union is marching forward on key strategic agenda issues like the game-changing,...

Following a tough process the jury of the European AppCup 2013 has chosen the winners of our competition.

One of the greatest opportunities in ICT right now is developing apps. Mobile innovation is no longer tied to things like hardware design but to app development.

Europe’s Nordic region  has already gained its notoriety  as a cluster for innovation, talent, skills as well as for creating opportunities in the ICT industry. Microsoft has also been supporting the Nordic region by investing in high-potential companies, through open-innovation programmes for developers and start-ups, like AppCampus, as well as by supporting education programs for young...

The SME receiving recognition this month is BizSpark start-up, OpenRatio from Sweden. This company was founded in 2011 by Rabih Kanaan and Agustinus Prasetyo Widodo and it enables mobile publishing for a broad range of mobile devices and platforms. OpenRatio offers solutions that respond to the current problems that designers and developers are facing: continuous market evolution (current consumers are...

Publishers are keen to take advantage of the mobile revolution and get their content available on smartphones and tablets, but this can be a laborious, time-consuming and expensive process. With Paperlit’s cloud-based service, publishers only upload content once to make it available to millions of tablet, smartphone and Facebook users.

Hilverse is a Polish company founded in December 2011 that runs a flagship project, LifeCircle+, which aims to revolutionise lifesaving methods by offering a comprehensive solution to existing challenges of the blood collection system.

Microsoft’s biggest global hackathon has recently taken place (between 9-11 November), with more than 16,500 student developers registered to attend events across more than 112 locations in 53 countries. Two of Europe’s largest events took place in Athens and Helsinki with hundreds of students taking part in the hackathons, which attracted 820 and 560 registrations respectively. We asked the...

Being a start-up is never easy but some markets are particularly challenging. The healthcare sector is arguably one of these, because of the (understandably) often complex layers of legislation and scientific validation required, so adoption of new innovation can be lengthy.

Take a look around you. The way we work has changed fundamentally in recent years, and technology―in particular cloud computing―is a key driver. Traveling across the region and having conversations with hundreds of business leaders across the CEE region over the past two years, it’s clear what cloud computing represents for these businesses: a flexible response to customer’s needs, delivering...

Start-ups not only need all the help they can get during these tough economic times, but they are also fundamental to helping European climb its way back to economic prosperity. Equipping the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators with the tools and support they need is therefore vital and is one of the reasons why so much of our focus on the launch of Windows 8 has been around working with the...

In celebration of the Windows 8 launch, this month our featured SME is Captain Dash, a French company that has developed an app for Windows 8 devices providing a business analytics service powered by the Windows Azure cloud. This app enables the aggregation and synchronization of business data from several web 2.0 services into a unique platform. This allows Captain Dash’s clients to better understand...

CEO and founder Sindhu Joseph took time out of her busy schedule running her very successful business to tell us her story, talk about working with Microsoft, winning Tech All Stars and what it’s like being an entrepreneur in a tough economy.

The SME deserving recognition this month is Monolith Advertising, an Estonian-Croatian company. It began operations just 3 months ago with the single purpose of revolutionizing offline advertising by transforming existing advertising displays into smart and interactive tools. Monolith Advertising is run by a team of 6 people who, since May 2012, have already managed to partner with major corporate...

Berlin’s Trifense, an EIT Entrepreneurship Award winner, takes a new approach to Internet security – and starts to gain traction in the market.

Worldwide, diagnosis of autism is traditionally a very manual process, one that is labour intensive, expensive, prone to error and without any room for observation. Dutch-based Autitouch has developed an innovative solution that uses Microsoft Surface technology to enable children to play ‘serious games’ that help the medical profession make more accurate diagnoses.

The SME receiving recognition for the month of August is JamPot Technologies, a company of 12 employees from Northern Ireland. JamPot invented an application that allows other companies and individuals to build their own mobile applications without needing any technical knowledge. JamPot’s innovations simplify the use of sophisticated technology, enabling any of us to create smartphone apps for any...

Victor Henning, co-founder of Mendeley, an online service that helps academic researchers organise and share the mounds of documents they collect, hardly looked up from his computer screen when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. He was immersed in the day-to-day routines of his start-up, including getting more users and securing the next round of venture capital.

Social stability, economic prosperity, and cultural richness all depend on educational excellence. Over the past thousand years, European universities have been at the forefront of shaping art, science and commerce.

Our July SME of the Month is Admiral Dynamics, a Belgian company that offers expertise in cloud-based solutions with particular focus on the powerful and efficient Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint tools. Its specialty is providing innovative, dynamic and flexible solutions that allow its customers to increase the efficiency and standard of their operations without making unnecessary...

In this case study, you can read about Desmoweb and their cloud-based solution jotURL that helps manage web content such as html, text, video & audio.

A major power outage in downtown Brussels did not mar the UNConvention, held in Brussels in June and which brought together young Europeans with innovative ideas, investors, business leaders, academics, policy and decision makers, including European Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

Commerce Guys, a young company based in France, was also the winner of the Microsoft BizSpark European Summit. This innovative eCommerce specialist uses the open source Drupal technology on top of the Windows Azure cloud platform. It provides online merchants with the powerful, responsive and innovative eCommerce solutions needed to succeed with Drupal Commerce.

It may be a cliché, but our collective future really does depend on the brightest and best of youthful talent. Here in Europe, Microsoft has initiated a huge focus on nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs, across a wide variety of projects and programs. Our latest involvement is at the UN Convention Young Innovators event taking place in Brussels 26-27 June.

With over 16,000 innovative start-ups part of BizSpark in Europe, you’d expect the calibre of the top 15 chosen to pitch in the annual BizSpark European Summit to be pretty high.  On June 7th, we had the chance to hear about the future of apps, the business of cloud, and the evolution of tech talent.  More than that, we also witnessed to an impressive showcase of innovative technologies...

The SME receiving recognition this month is Avaelgo, a Romanian company of 10 employees that offers IT consulting services, software development, and technical training for customers worldwide. Their flexible and innovative solutions are based on rapid adoption of cutting edge cloud platform technologies, and they ensure that their customers are at the forefront of their respective fields.

Small businesses can provide valuable solutions to the Public Sector, as Portuguese SME CaveDigital has demonstrated since 2005. Its 8 employees are committed to increasing the value of their clients’ technological investments by offering cloud-based solutions. Based in Portugal, their operations have extended across Europe, and North and Latin America since they formed 12 years. CaveDigital reaches...

A start-up created by two British medics combines social networks and cloud computing to make hospital staffing more efficient.

NetIntegrate is a Swedish IAMCP partner (International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners) that provides cloud based solutions for SMEs. The 2 employees of NetIntegrate are committed to providing customers the piece of the digital communications puzzle that allows them to shift focus from ICT maintenance to business processes, thereby increasing levels of productivity.

French company and IAMCP (International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners) member, ASCOT, demonstrates the potential for a small company to tailor cloud computing services for particular sectors: in this instance, the hotel business.

Our January European Cloud SME of the Month is Link, a Portuguese company that provides businesses with innovative consulting, management solutions, and specialized services. Link helps their customers to streamline business operations and achieve their goals without having to maintain cumbersome processes. Cloud computing platforms are now enabling Link to provide these services more effectively.

Look at the glass – what do you see?  Is it half full?  Is it half empty?  To a lot of start-ups, neither matter because they see a third way. Maybe they can do something totally different with the glass and on a big scale.  And it is this ‘out of the box’ thinking that is behind a whole new generation of start-ups, who if we give them a chance, could bring revenue into...

In just 15 years, Switzerland’s government and universities have worked to make the country a leader in entrepreneurship. It may be known for snow-covered mountains and cold-weather sports, but in terms of innovation, Switzerland is hot. The Alpine country with a population of 7.6 million is home to 61 technology parks, and its universities churn out dozens of science-based start-ups every year.

Video games are a worldwide boom industry and Europe is one of the strongest regions for potential growth. And much of that is being driven by small businesses and young entrepreneurs, who could turn their ideas into something big. Take Angry Birds from Rovio which started out as a small mobile games development studio in Finland. Now it’s a worldwide phenomenon.

The ICT sector is a very fluid and aggressive global market where technology is driving change, in fact it’s driving innovation across all sectors. There’s a huge amount of innovation coming from Russia and across the East. Look to Asia and you’ll see the Japanese ‘eBay’ coming our way which will undoubtedly put pressure on eBay. In the coming years we are going to see some...

The IT industry’s constant evolution is what makes it so exciting.  Our annual BizSpark European Summit is a great demonstration of this: in its 7th year, this event seems to be reaching new heights and attracting an increasingly impressive list of speakers, judges and delegates from the entrepreneurial community.

In this case study, you can read about how cloud computing has provided the Associated Press (AP) with new opportunities to open its revenue streams and find new customers for its content. The Associated Press (AP) provides up-to-the-minute news and information for newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Small and medium-sized enterprises – SMEs – will be the powerhouse of the Innovation Union that the EU must become if we are to enjoy sustainable prosperity in the face of ever stronger global competition.

Valentine’s Day isn’t the only day in the year to show someone you care! My colleague Claire Lee spoke with one of our partners, ParcelGenie, and learned how they make gift giving simple.

As we’ve highlighted in previous posts, one by the President of the SME Union and another on European Commission’s initiative: ACCESS-ICT 2010, great innovation needs to be partnered with access to capital and it remains one of the biggest challenges that the entrepreneurial community in Europe faces.

We had the chance to chat to Peter Jungen, the President of the SME Union and Chairman of Economic Policy council of EPP at the European Parliament. He shared with us his view on European innovation and entrepreneurship.

In this latest video recorded at the European Summit earlier this year we ask: Is Europe prepared for cloud computing? 

In this case study, you can read about LoveCleanStreets, a cloud-based application that helps London authorities manage street care with the help of crowdsourcing – supported by an innovative SME bbits.

Bulgarian firm Fresh Up Label wanted to implement an electronic system to help manage an increasingly complex production process.  Funding secured with the help of EUGA met 65% of the technology investment costs.

One of the most important ways in which we are supporting European technology companies is helping them find access to capital in those crucial early years.

Go is a game so complex that raw computing power was never going to be enough to turn it into a competitive computer game. But two Cambridge researchers found a way – with a programming language used for analysing financial risks.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, Ireland is one of Europe’s key hubs for innovation, offering an environment for tech entrepreneurs.It is crucial that in Ireland and the rest of Europe, SMEs can operate in an environment supportive of innovation.

The cloud is one of the most popular terms in IT today but perhaps also one of the least well defined. FUTURES guides you through the how and the why.

In this case study, you can read about the Royal Mail Group has improved their efficiency by giving its employees reliable & simple ways to access information through the adoption of Microsoft’s cloud solution. In the United Kingdom the Royal Mail Group has expanded their IT services agreement with CSC to include Microsoft’s Business Productivity Suite from Microsoft Online...

What is Le Web?

We were very proud to announce the grand opening of our Dublin data centre in September 2009.

Microsoft’s Akhtar Badshah wants to be a disruptive influence

Heard of The Good Entrepreneur? It’s a TV show where entrepreneurs from across Europe compete for a hefty prize package of €250,000 by attempting to produce the most amazing, environmentally responsible business concepts imaginable. 

Erich Andersen, VP and Deputy General Counsel of the Windows Business at Microsoft, speaking about Windows 7 as a potential driver of the European ICT economy.

Cliff Reeves – General Manager of the Emerging Business Team (which in non-Microsoft speak means he works with start-ups and investors to help them make the most of their relationship with Microsoft and grow into super-successful companies!) – recently travelled around Europe to meet with a number of start-ups and Network Partners in the BizSpark program. 

Microsoft's Vice President for EU affairs blogs via video on how ICT can stimulate Europe's growth

Please click below to view a short 1-minute interview with Erich Andersen, VP and Deputy General Counsel of the Windows Business at Microsoft, filmed on a recent visit to Europe.

Microsoft's Vice President for EU Affairs talks about the role of ICT into driving European growth

The European Research Council head urges basic research for economic growth – and charts a course for expansion

Since Hungary's accession into the European Union, the number of logistics operators in the country has been growing fast. This is particularly true for the region in and around the capital, Budapest, seen by foreign operators as a hub for distributing goods to other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The boom in the logistics sector is expected to foster significant economic growth in the region.

Budapest-based start-up eSpirit sought help from European Union Grants Advisor (EUGA) and applied for government funding to develop a new Web-based application. In just over six months, eSpirit received notice that it had secured a grant to cover 100 per cent development costs. The new product will result in significant rise in the company's market share.

The Lisbon Strategy's aim is to make the EU ‘the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, and respect for the environment by 2010'.

Vienna-based start-up IQ Mobile found that obtaining funding to develop innovative solutions was a straightforward exercise. It was awarded 15 per cent of the costs for its video telephony project and now names Sony BMG as one of its customers.