innovation

Innovation is one of our core values; innovation gave birth to commonIT and continues to influence how we approach the decisions we make every day to develop our business. So it there was no hesitation when we decided to partner with the Telecommunications department of INSA Lyon as a sponsor of its “Projets Innovants” (Innovative Projects) program.

Three of the four co-founders of commonIT are graduates of INSA Lyon, one of France’s leading graduate engineering schools. But sponsoring the Projets innovants program is about more than just giving something back to the old school. The program, run by Stéphane Frénot (tutor/researcher) et Hugues Benoit-Cattin (head of department), targets engineering students in the 4th year of their studies. The objective is to give the students the tools and methodologies to drive technological innovation, and includes a 6-month project. As a sponsor commonIT will meet regularly with the participants to deliver practical recommendations drawn from our own experience. CommonIT will also be sponsoring a prize for the three most innovative projects with an awards ceremony when the program draws to a close in June.

The RSA Spring conference in San Francisco (20th-24th April) is a worldwide showcase for security technologies. It’s an opportunity we wouldn’t want to miss. But with just three months between the date we incorporated and the event in San Francisco, the logistics of organizing our presence as an exhibitor while managing all the other aspects of getting our business up and running would have been overwhelming.

But RSA has (in a sense) come to our rescue! This year’s conference includes a side dish called the RSA Innovation Sandbox. Basically a start-up competition, RSA invites innovators like commonIT to sign up to deliver a four minute presentation and demo of their technology to a panel of industry gurus.

At the last count we were one of nearly 30 companies competing. If you’re registered to attend the RSA Conference you can help us by following this link and registering a vote for Virtual Browser.

And should we reach San Francisco, there’ll be a glass of Anchor Steam for any of our supporters we meet up with! Meanwhile here’s a preview of our 30 second demo video.