26th September 2010
University in deal with software giant
Birmingham City University’s School of Computing, Telecommunications and Networks has signed a major deal to work with the global software development company, 5G Technologies.
The aim of the collaboration is to support the government’s energy saving strategy by undertaking a wide range of research and development projects to improve efficiency and reduce energy costs.
The School will initially provide a consultancy service for 5G, which provides worldwide value-added automation intelligence solutions and products to a wide-range of clients from leading edge technology start-ups to large, global Fortune 50 enterprises in the areas of manufacturing, energy, utilities, retail and sports. In addition to the consultancy work, which will centre around the integration of Real-time Maintenance and Energy Management software into a range of global companies, it is also anticipated that a wide range of collaborative research opportunities for staff and students will develop including PhDs and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs).
The collaboration will help increase the School’s postgraduate provision with a view to attracting more full-time, overseas students. 5G will be embedding their software technologies into the University’s courses and offering opportunities for collaborative research in a wide variety of areas such as energy management, plant maintenance, and real-time plant to enterprise integration.
In addition to this, the School is currently working on embedding 5G’s Plant to Enterprise Integration Software into a range of MSc courses including the new SAP Accredited MSc Enterprise Systems Management due to launch in September 2010.
Programme Manager and Birmingham City University lecturer Mark Paul said: “This strategic relationship with 5G opens up a number of collaborative opportunities for the University. In addition to consultancy we will also be able to embed their technologies into a number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses enabling students to get ‘hands on’ experience of industrial plant maintenance software. This will also lead to increased student placements and KTPs as well as collaborative R&D projects going forward.
Jon Kent, Commercial Manager, 5G Technologies Europe Ltd said: “This relationship with BCU shall be a shining example of active university-industry collaboration for fast-tracking the diffusion of new ideas and products in manufacturing and business intelligence to the industry. Through our relationship we shall jointly work towards building the capabilities for the SMEs in the UK to adopt new technologies to their competitive advantage without having to incur huge capital costs”.
The Chairman and Managing Director of 5G, Dr. Ananth Seshan said: “Our company has a good history of nurturing bi-lateral academic partnerships – as a strategy, we catalyze the development of new intellectual property, which is the core of our business, by investing in long term joint research activities performed under the auspices of a PhD or Masters programme in reputed universities such as the Birmingham City University.”