Industry 4.0 and digital transformation in the regional SME ecosystem

CIDIHub aims at becoming the cornerstone of Cloud Computing, HPC Simulation, Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity in the Canary Islands by connecting technology providers with entrepreneurs, SMEs and mid-caps; strengthening their competitiveness and opening up new business areas in the context of digitalization and Industry 4.0.
For that purpose, the CIDIHub relies on the main regional competence centers, clusters and business associations, among other key players, addressing the actual digital needs and challenges of regional stakeholders and enterprises, for whom innovation and digitalization-wise services are provided based on high-level knowledge, technological resources and existing infrastructure.
In addition to the above-mentioned, other technologies CIDIHub will be managing are Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Art & Design, Modeling and Simulation, and of course Digital Manufacturing. On top of that, Future Internet technologies will be an asset together with FIWARE as a curated framework of open source platform components to accelerate the development of smart solutions.
Through the development of activities and the provision of services in the form of technological and consultancy support, training, research and testing, entrepreneurship assistance, etc., CIDIHub is focused mainly on some concrete and strategic sectors for the Canary Islands:

• Tourism
• Blue Economy
• Digital Manufacturing / Industry 4.0
• ICT and Audio-visual + Creative Industries (including digital art and design)

Services

Community building and dissemination activities
The CIDIHub challenges companies to evaluate whether their current efforts really address global trends and threats, and are aligned with the minimum digitization requirements in a short-term future. As well as the direct concerns of target sectors, in their communication activities the Hub must also address public awareness of digitisation, including the social dimension. Consideration should be given to issues related to the impact on employment, services and issues related to privacy and security.
Within this block of activities and services the CIDIHub pursues to enhance the generation of frequent collaboration opportunities and the engagement of a wide range of regional innovation and service providers (such as digital SMEs offering ICT and other services to tech and non-tech SMEs, existing business support centres, RTOs and training centers). Some additional efforts are also being allocated to reach companies that are still far from a minimum approach to the digital transformation scheme.

Provision of simulation and computing power and digitisation assistance
The main value proposition of the service is to give access to specialist expertise, equipment and infrastructure, where simulation and high-performance computing capacities and resources can be utilized through different commercial forms (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS), to:

• On one hand technology and service (mainly software) providers in their products’ offering under existing or new cloud-based models.
• On the other hand, users (mainly manufacturing companies) in their engineering and manufacturing processes where simulation and/or computing demands are present.

Contract research, testing and validation
The value proposition for this block of activities and services targets at an open and wide offer for technology providers and users to access to specialist expertise, equipment and infrastructure, in order to carry out research, testing and validation tasks on technology, products and services.
The commercial aim is to support those technology providers and users to execute experiments in real conditions and to test whether the proposed approach would indeed be beneficial and profitable for the user.
These experimentation environments generate best practices and use cases to be disseminated in sectorial oriented showrooms and demonstrators where other technology and service provider and user companies, as potential clients of the Hub services, can be reached.
The kind of support offered through this block of services, by the regional or other external competence centers (RTOs) is more specifically referred to:

• Providing expertise and technological advice.
• Providing HPC resources.
• Providing technology building blocks on the basis of which the solution may be built.
• Providing manufacturing pilot lines to produce prototypes or first series production.
• Providing facilities that are needed for testing.
• Providing access to living labs that can validate new products/services/business models.

Supporting new businesses and startups
The value proposition in this last block of services to be offered from the Hub organization is targeting at fostering and supporting new regional business initiatives and startups, with a special focus on the ICT related fields.
This is achieved through the implementation of a programme focused on:

• Providing personalized support and mentoring during the 10-months acceleration period.
• Identifying specific opportunities and challenges for the achievement of maximum growth potential.
• Benefiting of the business culture and know-how of regionally established consolidated international industrial groups.
• Working in innovative environments, business ideas rapidly turning into profitable products and services
• Raising funds based on the startups needs and operational fields.
• Adjusting current business models according to digitization approaches and identified market opportunities.