We have patent applications working through the system and certainly want to see the technology reach commercial maturity and success.

But to get there requires an all-important step: Validation of the solution in an industry context.

We’ve done plenty of trials based on hypothetical scenarios run in our lab, and these have helped us refine the prototype and re-affirm our confidence that we’re onto something good here.  But what we need to move ahead is a real business scenario – an example business system with high performance characteristics and risks associated with failure of its component services.  Examples might come from a telco’s operations support system or business support system, integrated services within a banking environment or trading exchange, or other complex service environments.

Such an engagement would most likely involve as a first step us simulating the target system in our secure environment (or it could also be on our partner’s premises), at no cost and no risk, in order to ‘prove the concept’.  Assuming this were successful, the next step might be to plan for a production scale trial.  By the time we attain commercial maturity and success, we would of course expect our first validation customers to receive privileged terms for continued use of the technology.

But for now, it’s that first engagement that we’re chasing.  If this description does not sound like it matches needs within your organisation, perhaps you know someone for whom it does.  If so, spreading the word would be appreciated!

Thanks.

We all know that high value collaborations, in particular when they concern research, are hard to pull off. In my experience the critical success factors include (but are not limited to!) the following:

1. There must be genuine stakeholder support, preferrably at the executive level, for the collaboration.

In this case we can put a big tick in that box: Our executive support comes from the top of both organisations.

2. The overlap and alignment of the technical interests and capabilities of the respective teams must be strong.

At a high, abstract level at least, we can tick this box too – we’ve collectively identified three or four technology areas that will be the bases for candidate projects. Our next task is to sharpen up the capability descriptions and research focus areas into actual research projects. Then we’ll be on our way to creating something meaningful.

I was going to describe here some of the specific technology areas that Citrix is focused on and where the areas of overlap are with our expertise. But then again anyone could work this out for themselves just by looking at the relevant websites. More importantly, my point here is to emphasise the nature of the (intended) collaboration itself and the overall goals. We talk about collaboration all the time here, but it’s rare to actually secure the commitment of a large vendor like Citrix. This is the type of “genuine” industry engagement we’d like to have more of.