US Research Tour 2018 Business Agenda

IntroductionEach year, we take a select group of IT leaders to Silicon Valley for a week-long technology research programme. This will be our 22nd year running the event, over which time we have built strong relationships with many Silicon Valley-based organisations, including industry-leading tech companies, start-ups, Incubators, Accelerators and Venture Capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners.

We will see approximately 40 technology companies; early to market companies approaching commercial launch, those with a domestic market looking to scale into global markets, and some established leading players too.Through a series of presentations and discussions led by founders and leaders of these companies, our delegates have access not only to the thought leadership behind the technology but also how these firms innovate and deliver.

This year we have chosen the theme of Digital enablement, seeking insight into the latest developments that address the key pillars of running a Digital Business.Following our initial research, we expect to see plenty of content on topics such as Mobility, Analytics (particularly self-service), Productivity, Corporate Innovation, Cyber Security, ‘Cloud’ and more. Our research shows that products and services that assist legacy migration are hot topics. With SaaS and Cloud hosting becoming more ubiquitous in a digital landscape, we see the value in finding innovative and cost-effective ways to deal with legacy business application and data issues.

Andy JefferiesTour chair 2018, co-founder & CEO Ntegra

US Research Tour 2018: Business Agenda

Tuesday 22 May 2018

Ripcord, HaywardRipcord is the world’s first robotic digitization company, using sophisticated automation and software to provide customers with a secure, fast and all-inclusive records management solution at low, predictable prices. Ripcord was established in 2015 because of a customer problem in dealing with massive volumes of paper records and is the first company to apply vision robotics to

Monday 21 May 2018

Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo ParkAndreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z) backs bold entrepreneurs who move fast, think big, and are committed to building the next major franchises in technology. Founded by Marc Andreessen, co-author of early web browser Mosaic and co-founder of Netscape, and Ben Horowitz previously of Netscape and CEO of OpsWare, the firm provides entrepreneurs with access to expertise and insights in innovation, executive and technical talent, market intelligence, policy and regulatory affairs, business development, and marketing and brand-building.We are working closely with

Andreesen Horowitz to curate a day of high calibre presentations from some of their portfolio companies with strong B2B propositions and sharing their current thinking about technology and market developments.

paper digitization. In addition to a presentation on their Canopy SaaS solution, we will tour their new Hayward based facility and see their impressive robotics in action.

Greylock Partners, Menlo ParkGreylock Partners, one of the longest established venture capital firms in the Bay area, backs entrepreneurs who are building disruptive, market-transforming consumer and enterprise software companies. They invest in companies that define new markets, including Airbnb, AppDynamics, Cloudera, Docker, Dropbox, Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, Nextdoor, Palo Alto Networks, and Workday – six of which we have seen on our tour in recent years. Greylock also introduce us to several non-portfolio companies not under investment that are relevant to our audience – testimony to our strong partnership with them.

Wednesday 23 May 2018

IBM research, AlmadenA rather privileged stop for us this year will be at IBM Research – Almaden, one of IBM’s 18 worldwide research labs that form IBM Research, and not usually host to study tours. Its scientists perform basic and applied research in computer science, services, storage systems, physical sciences, and materials science and technology.We will be hosted for the morning, where IBM will provide us with an overview their role in leading the company’s strategic agenda through research into topics such as Quantum Computing, AI and Open Source. Take a look at their Frontiers Institute here: http://www.research.ibm.com/frontiers/#about

Executive Panel @ Stanford Park Hotel, Palo AltoA key component of this year’s tour will be our first Executive Panel, hosted at the Stanford Park Hotel in Palo Alto.

Our panel will feature Partners from leading venture firms, renowned entrepreneurs and research and insights leaders from the valley. Our delegates will propose the themes for discussion to address their ‘top of mind’ challenges.

This is a unique opportunity for our delegates to interact with world leading technology influencers and strategists, and will give them the edge when considering how to drive their businesses forward and take a

lead over their competitors.

Our panel is just one of the ways our US Research Tour gives our delegates critical insight into the future and the opportunity to take ‘first mover advantage’ - key in today’s fast-moving business environment.

Following the panel, we will showcase several technology companies before giving delegates an early finish and free evening to themselves. Presenting companies include:

Litbit Litbit have created a platform that packages, automates, and magnifies domain expertise into AI personas with superhuman senses. Targeted at teams that manage spaces and equipment, their mobile-first solution makes it possible to implement end-to-end AI without the need for data scientists or complex deployments. Element Analytics Element Analytics organizes industrial data into an accessible and useful form, and transforms it into actionable insights that help people make the best informed decisions for greater worker safety, sustainability, and business profit.

MapperMapper is poised to become the largest data provider of Machine-Readable Maps (MRM) operating at global scale.

PropserWorks Somewhere along the way, CRMs became difficult to use. With a focus on design, usability and integration with Google’s G Suite, ProsperWorks was built to deliver a seamless experience that puts email at the core of the workflow.

HoneyComb Honeycomb provides full stack observability—designed for high cardinality data and collaborative problem solving, enabling engineers to deeply understand and debug production software together. Founded on the experience of debugging problems at the scale of millions of apps serving tens of millions of users, we empower every engineer to instrument and query the behaviour of their system.

• E X E C U T I V E PA N E L •

Cyber showcase @ vArmour, vArmour, one of the presenters on a previous tour, will be hosting us for the afternoon session where we will bring 5-6 exciting companies with the latest in Cyber security technologies and bringing some revealing truths to the session! vArmour provide a distributed security system that

CyCognito CyCognito’s platform provides organizations a complete Attack Surface analysis from a sophisticated attacker point of view. Cerebo Cerebro Data simplify the complexity of data management, governance, and operations, enabling customers to widen access to data-centric employees.

Enveil Enveil is a pioneering data security company working to protect Data in Use. Performing actions such as search and analytics have historically required decryption, creating points of exposure. Enveil’s Never Decrypt computation capability closes this last gap in data security by protecting data while it is in use.

Thursday 24 May 2018

NASA Ames research, Mountain ViewA highlight of this years’ tour will be a visit to NASA’s Ames Research Centre. Established in 1939, NASA’s Ames Research Center contributes to virtually every major NASA mission and initiative via their expertise in not just Aerosciences, Space and Earth Science, but areas such as Advanced Computing & IT Systems, Entry Systems and Air Traffic Management.

Space and Earth Science NASA will share with us details of their supercomputing capabilities (also known as high performance computing, or HPC), and their Quantum AI Laboratory (or QuAIL).We will hear from some of the companies they incubate and partner with to learn about their latest research and real-life applications for both NASA and commercial use.

We will also be visiting Ripcord during the week - previously incubated at NASA, so we will be able to see first-hand the progression of innovation from research lab through to the commercial enterprise.

provides application- aware microsegmentation by wrapping protection around every workload. Tim Eades, their CEO is a prolific investor in valley based tech companies, and sits on several company boards and will provide us with a brief talk before we handover to the presenting companies he has helped us discover.

Prospective presenters include:

Friday 25 May 2018

Sequoia Capital, Menlo ParkEnding on a high, we will visit one of the leading Venture Capital firms in the Valley. Sequoia, will bring

through a selection of their portfolio companies we have jointly selected to present to us. We will then be joined by Blair Shane, CMO of Sequoia over lunch, who will provide us with insight into Sequoia and how valley companies are building the enduring brands of tomorrow.

We will then wrap up the event Delegates will then be transferred mid-afternoon back to the airport.

What can I expect?

Delegates are expected to book their own flights to the USA, arriving on Saturday 19th May. We will collect you from San Francisco or San Jose airport and host you for the week, including all transport, hotel, meals and the event itself.Our base for the week will be in the heart of Silicon Valley – the Stanford Park Hotel in Palo Alto. This gives us easy access to the entire Bay area and short transfers to our daily locations.

Sunday will be a ‘free’ social day to allow you to unwind and recover from the flight. We’ll put on transport to San Francisco and co-ordinate some activities for those wanting them and get together later on for dinner. Why are we different? We know there are other ‘Safari’ tours to Silicon Valley. However, they are larger, less personal events or driven by one of the established tech giants who manage the agenda and therefore the value you receive. Our event is smaller and more intimate - giving our delegates more time with our hosts, presenters and more time with one another to network and share insights. This is a key factor in the longevity of the tour, and the Venture Capitalists and other organisations we work with echo our view.

Why Silicon Valley? What about the other tech ecosystems emerging? Startup Genome, a leading San Francisco Start-up researcher, includes two EU ecosystems in their global top 10. They rank London three in the world (after Silicon Valley and New York City).

With London on our doorstep why travel to the US? We believe there are two answers; scale and the ecosystem. Whilst both London and Berlin are major players, the

scale of the Valley and its start-up ecosystem outstrips anywhere else in the world by an order of magnitude. Silicon Valley indexes higher than any other ecosystem in all measures (global research, access to funding, performance and talent).

Exit performance provides one of the most telling reasons why Silicon Valley is the single largest technology powerhouse. Silicon Valley accounts for over 35% of exit value on its own. The next highest is Beijing at around 10%. Looking at all US ecosystems they account for a staggering 50% plus of exit value. That leaves even

the most successful of non-US ecosystems with a small proportion of exit value. Silicon Valley doesn’t have it all its own way - there is evidence that other ecosystems, often backed by significant government intervention, are making an impact - it’s just a small one at present.

We go to the valley because there is nowhere else like it on earth. The blend of leadership, talent, access to funding is second to none. Don’t just take my word for it, please contact us and we would happy to discuss in more detail.