Barclays challenges entrepreneurs on innovation in annual event

On Monday, 20 October and Tuesday, 21 October 2014 Barclays held its second annual Technology Open Innovation Challenge in Silicon Valley.

The aim was to meet with start-ups and entrepreneurs who have developed innovative solutions not currently on offer from existing organisations, setting a vision for the future that is different from today. In total, 36 companies pitched their solutions against some pre-defined challenges - next-generation payment solutions, cloud bridges, big data performance, cyber security and automation.

At the event, Michael Harte, Barclays Chief Operations and Technology Officer, explained our goal of becoming the ‘Go-To’ bank, the importance Barclays places on entrepreneurs, and praised the companies for their courage and passion. Bracket Computing was named as the ‘Most Innovative Prospect’ for their software computing architecture that allows enterprises to harness the scale, elasticity, and efficiency of the public cloud, while maintaining the security, performance, and control of a dedicated hardware data centre. Honourable mentions were given to Databricks, Ionic Security, Tamr, Thousand Eyes and WorkFusion.

Barclays will continue to support many of the companies as they refine their propositions, with the potential prospect of on-boarding some of these break-through solutions in the future.