Author Archive for Tarmo Pihl

Skills gap in IT is widening

Published
by
Tarmo Pihl
  on  March 4, 2006
  in  eCommerce
. 0 Comments

By 2008 there will be a shortage of up to half a million people across Europe with the advanced networking technology skills needed to drive European business, according to a study and white paper by IDC, commissioned by Cisco Systems.

This figure represents an average advanced technology skills gap of 15.8% by 2008. In a third of the 31 countries surveyed, demand for these skills will outstrip supply by more than 20% in 2008, with Eastern European countries, especially non-EU member States, facing the widest shortfalls.

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Rules for participation in FP7 actions

Published
by
Tarmo Pihl
  on  January 30, 2006
  in  EU funding programmes
. 0 Comments

As Framework Programme 6 is coming gradually to its natural end, preparations for FP7 are taking up speed. Despite of some setbacks with EU financial perspective and budget for 2007-2013, which was declined in the Parliament some weeks ago, it is becoming ever more clear that the next programme will be more ambitious and will provide larger incentives both for academia as well as industry for participation.
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Investing into Ukrainian electronic mass payment system

Published
by
Tarmo Pihl
  on  December 16, 2005
  in  eCommerce
. 1 Comment

Recently, during my visit to Ukraine I came across of very interesting investment proposal, which might be of interest to professional Venture Capital or Equity Investors. Persons behind the project have 10+ years of experience in the field and are looking for strategic partners.

Briefly about the project: during 1993-05 an Interbank Electronic Payment System was introduced in Ukraine (so called Ukrainian SWIFT), where the predecessor of the Company was actively involved in. Today Ukrainian SWIFT system has been implemented and now National Bank of Ukraine is considering the introduction of National System of Mass Electronic Payments (NSMEP) to release the potential of integrated payment system and increase the turnover of non-cash transactions.

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National seed capital fund to be rolled out in Estonia in 2006?

Published
by
Tarmo Pihl
  on  November 10, 2005
  in  Venture capital
. 0 Comments

It was in 1994 when Jeff Bezoz and his few employees created a web site and database in Bezos’ Bellevue, Washington garage. It was few months later when he approached local venture capital (VC) firms in search for valuable growth capital. None of the venture capitalists invested – they evaluated the idea good, but company not attractive enough for investment. Today, with about 45% stake in Amazon.com Bezoz’s share is worth at least an easy $2 billion, while initial investment he received from business angels totaled marginal $1.2 million.

Ironically, a year later angel and venture capital investments soared and investments were made into virtually everything that went on Internet. Total venture capital investments in the USA increased nearly 15 fold in six years, from a mere $6.3 billion in 1995, to an unworldly $90 billion in 2000. However, the feast did not last long. Everything came back to earth again in 2001, when dot com bubble eventually burst, and when forty-nine out of the Silicon Valley’s fastest 50 lost value, with the majority experiencing market capitalization declines of 80%.

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Estonian participation in FP6, current status

Published
by
Tarmo Pihl
  on  November 7, 2005
  in  Facts, figures & trends and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

For a small country with insufficient pool of human resources, pan-European programmes such as Framework Programme (FP) represent an excellent possibility to embark on collaborative R&D projects and exploit their part of research capacities. For researchers the collaborative projects represent a possibility to do the best research together with excelling research partners, for SMEs the projects provide unique opportunity to share risks of their R&D with EU funding, but also create strong partnerships with possible end users and address future markets.

On the other hand, limited funds (tentatively, the budget of FP6 is less than 5% of all EU Member States R&D spending) and high interest amongst FP constituency underline very competitive nature of participation in the programme. With average success rates well below one fourth, it is the programme for the very best and experienced. Frequently, it applies also for countries – countries with higher innovation capacity, strong science and technology coordination policies and experienced support structures have also leading edge in Framework Programme, as their competitive position is better suited to the very nature of the programme. Thus, the chances of new member states to be particularly successful in FP is more a wishful thinking than current reality, as framework for participation in those countries is different.

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Interested in Estonian partners?

Published
by
Tarmo Pihl
  on  October 21, 2005
  in  Case studies
. 0 Comments

Success of Skype, a peer-to-peer telephony network, which was sold recently to eBay for roughtly 3,2 billion USD, marks clearly the potential of Estonian developers in creating world class products. In 2002, starting with mere 10 employees, the company has meanwhile grown to more than 100 employees internationally, three thirds of them located in Estonia. Pradoxically, there are few people who know that almost entire technical development of the company is lead from Tallinn.

For a small country, with limited market size and resources, participation in collaborative development projects is one feasible way of gaining critical mass. This has been true for Skype as well ? the vision comes from Scandinavia, sales are done from London, and technology development in Estonia. For these purposes, interest towards partnering on EU scales is remarkably high amongst our companies. EU funded programmes consitute quite a good possiblity for entering international networks, serving as a source for additional funding as well as a source for complementing partners and future customers.

Archimedes Foundation, an organisation nominated as official National Contant Point for Framework Programme 6 and a number of other EU programmes such as eTen, eContent+, EUREKA, COST etc, serves to assist local companies and RTD centres in networking with foreign partners. Apart of that, consultations on proposal preparation are provided and international partner searches pursued. Archimedes Foundation acts also as an Innovation Relay Centre, supporting SMEs with technology transfer. More information on the organisation can be found at www.irc.ee.

Thus, once partners from Estonia are needed, you are most welcome to contact our people from Archimedes Foundation, who will kindly help you in identifying proper and credible partner for your project. In case you are interested in Estonia in general or specifically in ICT sector developments, more information can be found at www.esis.ee.

Regio: Successful SME from Estonia

Published
by
Tarmo Pihl
  on  November 6, 2004
  in  Case studies
. 0 Comments

A vivid example of a company with persistent patience before achieving success in participating in EU innovation programmes is Regio Ltd, the leading Estonian geoinformation systems provider. Regio has participated in a number of proposals as partner, both for FP5 and FP6, but also for eContent programme. The performance was poor in the beginning because a newcomer the company had difficulties in positioning itself into winning consortia and the technological solutions offered within the projects were not sufficiently innovative. But with the growth and maturity of the company the success rate has soared, topping with astounding 75% in FP6. The missing 25% from complete success is separated by the project, which is currently placed in the reserve list for IST call 5. We tried to find out what is behind such success.

Regio Ltd was established back in 1990 as geospacial information provider. The main business line at that time was cartography. Complete shift to digital technologies occurred in 1994, which in fact established Regio as an IT company rather than a mapping company. The shift to digital format was widely supported also by exponential growth of Internet and web-based products, where electronic maps constitute an important functional layer.

In 2000 Regio developers elaborated a first Mobile Positioning System in the world, testing it together with Ericsson Eesti AS and Rescue Services. Since then, MPS system has been one of the main products that have driven company’s growth. Today, Regio is one of the main MPS vendors to Ericsson, taking care for the operability of their middleware in Ericsson’s product range. Strategic partnership with Ericsson has lead Regio’s expansion to Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Mexico, Romania, Slovakia.

With this, the original mapping company has actually developed into telecom value added service provider. International expansion has coupled with success in EU funding programs, where good credentials, partnership with Ericsson, participation in evaluation of proposals etc have helped the company to become a valuable partner in high quality EU consortia. Today, Regio participates or is about to start with the following IST projects: MOTIVE, QVIZ, WISECOM.

Regio has clearly managed to capitalize on its proprietary MPS technology, which has proven its value adding features in Ericsson’s network. Experience in promoting its innovative technology on international scales, has attracted interest towards the company also from major FP6 players, which have found Regio as a good partner and niche technology provider, which adds value to their projects. It is paradoxical, but up to now, Regio has not proposed any project into FP itself, success has come via participation in project consortia as a partner. This demonstrates clearly that starting with its own project is not the best solution since this requires a lot of efforts and bears large risk of failure. As an alternative, it might be worthwhile to focus on creating international visibility and positioning ones technology into mainstream innovations.