VBN develops e-business portal for the Oxford-Cambridge Arc that will 'rival Silicon Valley'

Published in M2 PressWire
20 October 2003

Cambridge-based Virtual Business Network (VBN), the UK's leading application service provider for innovation clusters, has been appointed to build a cutting-edge business portal for the Oxford2Cambridge Arc (02C arc).

Launched in 2000, the 02C arc, which comprises the area between and immediately surrounding Oxford and Cambridge, aims to become Europe's most successful knowledge-based economy and ultimately the world leader.

Terry Hanby, who is responsible for the development of the 02C arc, said: 'The portal is absolutely critical to what we are trying to achieve. It will form one of the central pillars of our network, providing an invaluable service to our members and leading the region towards 21st century communication. We chose to work with VBN because of their outstanding in-depth understanding of online business networks and innovation clusters.

'Together with VBN we are confident that we will create a portal that will capture the spirit of innovation of the region and create a knowledge based economy that will rival that of Silicon Valley.'

The first phase of the development of the portal http://www.oxford2cambridge.com has just been completed and includes services such as a 24/7 virtual tradeshow, investor centre and cluster centre, as well as functions such as 'Spider Searching', 'Enquiry Broker', event ticketing, newsletter and member personalisation.

In addition, VBN and BT will be working together to integrate various applications and services that will help O2C to lead their constituency to the 'e' world. BT is on the O2C steering committee and one of the first services on offer to members will be BT MeetMe.

VBN has been providing e-community websites for over two years to organisations such as the Cambridge Network, Venturefest Oxford, the YMCA and Trade Partners UK. Founder Simon Elliott says: 'VBN is delighted to be working on such a prestigious project. We are now entering phase two of the project which involves the development of Business Centre services, a Conference Centre, Supplier Warehouse and online and mobile services.

We are also very pleased to be working with BT and the plan is to build on this relationship so we can offer BT's applications and services in this area to all our clients'.

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Article Id:	100040
Release date:	20 Oct 2003

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