OSTRAVA, Czech Republic, Feb. 10, 2020 — Digitalisation is increasingly regarded as one of the keys to ensure the future competitiveness of enterprises, including small and medium-sized ones. IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, a research institute of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, together with the Moravian-Silesian Innovation Centre Ostrava have therefore decided to share their know-how through the setting up of the Digital Innovation Hub Ostrava. The Hub will help companies primarily based in the Moravian-Silesian Region to identify, and potentially even meet their needs in the field of digitalization.

On January 30, 2020, IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center (IT4Innovations) and the Moravian-Silesian Innovation Centre Ostrava (MSIC Ostrava) concluded a memorandum establishing the Digital Innovation Hub Ostrava (DIH Ostrava). The strategic objective of DIH Ostrava is to encourage the implementation and utilization of advanced digital innovation across enterprises as well as society. “The set-up of DIH Ostrava naturally integrates the expertise of both renowned centers under one roof.

MSIC is apt to establish cooperation with enterprises exhibiting innovation potential and to provide them with customized support. IT4Innovations, on the other hand, is apt to provide such support in specific areas of digitalization such as high-performance computing, big data analysis, and artificial intelligence”, says Martin Duda, the DIH Ostrava project coordinator.

DIH Ostrava will offer a diverse portfolio of services and activities. Performing digital audits in the first place can help to identify particular needs for digital solutions. As a result, new transformation projects can be set up, or testing can be performed in order to assess whether and to what extent to invest in a given digital solution. Development and application of a particular digital solution may be in the form of simple transformation of a selected business process, such as the records of customer relations, into a digital form. Conversely, such digital solutions may include a very sophisticated, modern technology-dependent transformation, such as testing of parameters of physical products using a developed digital twin.

“We believe that bringing together MSIC Ostrava and IT4Innovations will help enterprises based in the Moravian-Silesian Region use opportunities coming along with digitalization, robotization, and other advanced technologies. MSIC Ostrava has already been pilottesting the performance of digital audits and proposals for transformation projects within the DIGIExpand program. Within DIH Ostrava, we will be able to further extend these services and thus help a greater number of enterprises”, added Adéla Hradilová, who is responsible for preparing projects and programs to support development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the Moravian-Silesian Region.

Small and medium-sized enterprises usually have neither the financial resources nor enough staff to earmark digital technologies for testing and potential implementation. This is also facilitated by the cooperation with the Moravian-Silesian Region, which decided to pilot support for the mechanisms of digitalisation support in small and medium-sized enterprises including financial advantage on selected types of services and access to supercomputing resources.

About IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava (hereinafter “IT4Innovations”) represents a strategic large research infrastructure, and together with two other infrastructures, CESNET and CERIT-SC, constitutes the E-infrastructure of the Czech Republic. IT4Innovations provides state-of-the-art supercomputing technology and services to both Czech and foreign research teams from academia and industry and conducts excellent research in the field of High Performance Computing (HPC), High Performance Data Analysis (HDPA), and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Core IT4Innovations research topics are advanced data processing and analysis, machine learning, the development of parallel scalable algorithms, the solution of demanding engineering tasks, and modelling for nanotechnology. Currently, IT4Innovations runs four supercomputers – Anselm, Salomon, Barbora and a special system for AI calculation NVIDIA DGX-2. A petascale system EURO_IT4I will be installed in IT4Innovations as a part of EuroHPC project in 2020. For more visit www.it4i.cz

About Moravian-Silesian Innovation Centre Ostrava

Moravian-Silesian Innovation Centre Ostrava (hereinafter “MSIC Ostrava”) began its activity in July 2017 by transforming the Scientific and Technological Park Ostrava. At the beginning of 2017, an agreement was reached, rendered as Memorandum of Cooperation, between the city of Ostrava and the Moravian-Silesian region regarding a joint undertaking in the support of regional entrepreneurship and innovation. Part of the transformation constituted a substantial redefinition of ownership, pertaining to the change of the company name, with the aim to build a brand and a competent organization for the development of regional innovation ecosystem. For more visit www.ms-ic.cz

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Source: IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center