City University London uses Huddle cloud collaboration to help early-stage startup businesses prepare for investment.

The Levytator, TheBackscratchers.com, Totempower Energy Systems, Colour Vision Testing and Ring U are just some of the innovative products and services that City Techcelerator is helping to develop, nurture and commercialize. City Techcelerator, a program run by City University London, helps early-stage, high-growth start-up businesses like these and many more to prepare for investment.

Ring U, for example, is a device that is transforming human communication, it demonstrates how human senses beyond vision and sound can be passed via the internet in real-time. It’s been invented by professor Adrian Cheok at City University London and the University is assisting in the commercialization process.

The challenge for City Techcelerator is to ensure quick, secure and consistent collaboration among the tech entrepreneurs involved in all these ideas. This includes groups of MBA, PhD, Masters and other post-graduate students, plus stakeholders from other business schools, academics and the technical transformation team.

“City Techcelerator is a virtual program,” explains Parveen Dhanda, City Techcelerator Manager, City University London. “The people involved in developing these innovations work in multiple different locations across London and they travel a lot. The one common need is for continuous, seamless access to the commercially sensitive information associated with each project.”

So City Techcelerator turned to Huddle. “We looked at alternatives, but they all lacked the ease of use and functionality that Huddle offers. In an age of information overload and packed email inboxes, Huddle shines out for simplifying the entire information sharing process.”

Parveen and her team rely on the Huddle cloud-based collaboration platform to review, edit and upload content associated with the development and commercialization of new products and services. The content spans everything from primary research and business plans to budgets and strategy documents. “There are no barriers to sharing the content; it’s secure and universally available to the individuals with the appropriate permissions. One of the other great attributes is that an MBA and a PhD student can interact with one another, sharing one another’s profile and other information.”

 

 “We looked at alternatives, but they all lacked the ease of use and functionality that Huddle offers. In an age of information overload and packed email inboxes, Huddle shines out for simplifying the entire information sharing process.”

 

Take the Colour Vision Testing commercial venture, for example. This is a revolutionary advanced test for colour vision screening, which helps to identify the intensity of colour blindness in an individual and reduce the onset of age-related macular degeneration. Huddle allows all the stakeholders to share secure, instant access to all of the content associated with the business venture. They can view and edit files from one central location, create secure workspaces across firewalls with external business schools and other teams, and receive automatic reminders about tasks as deadlines approach.

Mobility is a popular feature of Huddle. The City Techcelerator users simply download the app and have instant access anywhere, anytime to all the Huddle features. “The students really like the mobile functionality. They are constantly on the move, but never far away from the content or the decisions,” says Dhanda.

Given the commercial sensitivity of these business propositions, security is vital. Huddle scores again here. Premium data centers, rigorous certification processes and security embedded into every aspect of the product design ensures the data is always protected. “Huddle gives us an audit of who viewed the content, when and what they changed, which is another layer of security we like. The problem with the alternative cloud collaboration software products is that if a student leaves the program, they may continue to have access to the data. We can’t afford to let that happen—and with Huddle we don’t,” Parveen adds.

The bottom line is that everyone using Huddle at City Techcelerator works faster. Dhanda concludes, “Huddle isn’t a data repository; it’s a platform to collaborate on projects—all the way from creation to commercialization. It’s a one-stop solution for our projects, and one that I couldn’t imagine being without today.”