News - Wireless

One marker which shows that the strength of technology entrepreneurship in the East of England is above that of almost any other area in the UK can be seen in Deloitte's breakdown of the country for its popular Technology Fast 50 venture.

In the regional element of the Fast 50, Cambridgeshire and the densely populated metropolis of London are the only regions given any real degree of distinction in Deloitte's eight categories - the other six covered by the broad strokes of the South East, South West & Wales, Midlands, North, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

So it is quite incredible that within such a fertile territory for an industry where meteoric growth is a common occurrence, one company should stand out in consecutive years, ranked as the region's fastest growing technology company. That company is Ubisense.

Developing a 3D technique that tracks people and items in real time to an accuracy of around six inches, which serves like a GPS system for the indoors and with a far greater accuracy, Ubisense's growth has snowballed in the two and a half years since it landed EU and US regulatory approval for its ultra-wideband (UWB) based solution.

Deloitte quoted its growth over the last five years at a massive 2,513 per cent, making it the number one fastest growing tech firm in the region and 16th in the UK. The previous year it was 15,324 per cent, placing it second in the UK, third in Europe and first in the region.

Organic growth at this level is clearly unsustainable, but with major deals coming through such as Raytheon, IBM, Lockheed Martin and a major new partnership with one of the world's top industrial tool manufacturers, Atlas Copco (first revealed by Business Weekly in April), Ubisense is on track to boost revenue by 50 per cent in a recession year and could reach £100m at the top line within five years or less.

Ubisense has its origins at the University of Cambridge, where in 1996 a team of four researchers came under the guidance of the prodigious Professor Andy Hopper. The laboratory's mantra was "invent it, build it and spin it out" and the group began work that would lead to the development of a finegrained location system.

With the technology and direction refined by some of the region's best known names including Hermann Hauser and Cambridge Consultants, it eventually became the ultrawideband (UWB) based real-time location system (RTLS) that sits at the heart of Ubisense, filling a gap left open by Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, which can only operate outdoors and is accurate to just 10 metres, RTLS can track indoors to an accuracy of better than six inches.

The company was officially incorporated in 2002, merged with Ten Sails in 2006 and in May 2007, made the hard-fought EU regulatory breakthrough that has allowed a full-on assault on the European and US markets, triggering the phenomenal growth recognised by Deloitte this year and last.

Its position at the front of this new, expanding market means the economic climate hasn't had the effect it has on other industries and 2009 not only represented its first profitable quarter, but is set to provide its first profitable year.

Ubisense chief executive, Richard Green, is focused on pushing home this advantage and forcing the pace of growth. "We have entered into a pretty new market, one which works where GPS does not, and we are pressing the advantage that gives us," said Green.

"We see ourselves growing faster than the market - at least 50 per cent next year and then we are looking at doubling each year after that."

The collaboration with Atlas Copco Industrial Technique is perhaps Ubisense's most important partnership to date because of the Swedish company's massive worldwide presence within manufacturing, though the spark for the venture came in car building.

"This is huge news for us," said Green. "They probably have more offices than we have people - every third car in the world has been assembled with Atlas Copco tools and the contract could be worth millions of pounds over the next couple of years.

"We already have a beta product that we have been demonstrating in Stockholm to the Atlas Copco sales team and which will be rolled out in the new year."

Anders Lindquist, president MVI Division at Atlas Copco, says the company became aware of the potential of the Ubisense approach to real-time location through mutual customer, BMW.

"Subsequent discussions with potential customers for this type of technology not only in the motor vehicles market, but also in aerospace, mining and construction equipment as well as discrete manufacturing, led us to the idea of pooling our knowledge and resources to create a new family of solutions for our customers," said Lindquist.

The application at BMW called LIS/TAS involves tracking the industrial tools used on the final assembly line and loading the correct program into the tool automatically based on the specific vehicle being worked upon.

With so many cars made to order, this has eliminated the need to scan vehicles individually in order to identify them.

As well as BMW, the Ubisense system is installed in the production facilities of such companies as Aston Martin, Caterpillar and Honda. Last week the company presented to Ferrari and initial signs are that it could lead to a contract with the prancing horse.

The same processes exist within the aviation industry, where Atlas Copco also has a major presence. "Atlas Copco provides tens of thousands of tools for use by companies such as Airbus and car manufacturers and is producing a new generation of wireless tools which will be using Ubisense technology," said Green.

"We know there's one aircraft manufacturer looking to kit out their whole operation with wireless tools from Atlas Copco, which would all carry Ubisense technology."

With manufacturing at the heart of Ubisense's growth plans, the company is increasingly looking overseas and in particular to the Far East.

Though Green says the company is very comfortable financially, further funds may be sought if it pursues a more aggressive expansion strategy, possibly even through a public stock market listing.

"It is not part of a our current plans, but things change quickly," said Green. "We do not need money to grow organically, but if we decide we want to expand aggressively in Asia, where we have a toe hold, we may look for investment to grow.

"At the moment we have Posco in Korea, offices in Singapore and Australia, and next year we are looking seriously at moving into Japan and China."

The attraction of Japan and China is the two countries' enormous manufacturing industries. Manufacturing is Ubisense's number one priority at the moment and Green says he is hopeful of wrapping up another very large contract in the sector in the early part of next year.

But Ubisense is by no means a one-trick pony and the RTLS technology, which has just been shortlisted for the Best of British Award for Science, Innovation and Technology backed by the Government Science and Innovation minister Lord Drayson, has a large range of vertical markets in its sights.

It has already made great strides in defence with a Raytheon contract linked to the US Army; transport where local authorities need to keep track of their buses within the depots; and agriculture for farmers who can track their cow herds to see which individuals aren't moving well and are potentially ill.

AlItalia in Rome has recently installed RTLS and is seeing the benefits it can bring in the context of tracking the Italian national carrier's ground crew.

And that is just the beginning. "Just look at how GPS has changed over the last 15 years - it's everywhere you look, in cars, mobile phones," said Green who has long held that the technology could be as big as GPS and that it could equally make it into consumer devices.

Green says the original Andy Hopper vision related to ubiquitous computing, which is where the name Ubisense comes from - the company was once called Ubiquitous Systems. Now that the wider industry is beginning to tune into the same vision, it stands on the verge of finally becoming a reality. "We see ourselves growing faster than the market - at least 50 per cent next year and then we are looking at doubling each year after that."