Welcome to the cloud

As pervasive as smart phones and Pokemon, cloud computing is commonplace these days. Whether an online mail server, backing up contacts and photos on your phone, accessing files on Google Docs or scrolling through Facebook, cloud computing stealthily makes our connected, digital lives possible.

You might not even know you’re using it. You almost certainly won’t know that Bristol is the world’s second largest cloud computing hub – or certainly Europe’s, depending on the research you consult – competing with the likes of Seattle, Berlin and Barcelona. That’s thanks in part to its development here.

“Bristol has a well-established and fast-growing cluster of companies making a global impact on cloud computing,” says Leader of Oracle’s Bristol cloud development centre, Phil Bates, who says their presence here has expanded “significantly” in recent years. “Oracle, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Amazon and Cray all have significant software engineering teams in Bristol building global products and cloud services,” a world-class cluster that has developed organically without explicit economic strategy.

“The cloud story really goes back to the late 90s, ten years before other people thought of it,” explains Dr John Manley, then director of cloud computing in Hewlett Packard Laboratories, the forward-looking research lab in Filton that investigates how computing could evolve. Now retired, he says that Bristol had a huge head start in the field.

“It was called utility computing in those days,” he continues, describing how it was conceived as a way of outsourcing intensive computing tasks in industry, “effectively renting computer time when you needed it.

“Now it’s become more and more pervasive, especially for storage.”

After developing the idea for four years, his team real world tested it, using the animation industry as test bed: “We chose CGI rendering because it’s a highly computer intensive task,” says John, explaining how they commissioned an animation to prove the concept and took it to Dreamworks.

“One day later they wanted to used the tech in Shrek 2. We provided 600 years’ worth of rendering; Alex the Lion has several thousand individual hairs in his mane. It opened up new possibilities.”

That early work rooted cloud computing permanently in Bristol and established solid links with US counterparts. We’re effectively the world’s cloud computing workshop: “we’ve developed a concentration of people developing the underlying tech,” says John. The major names are backed up by a suite of mid-tier companies, an active, collaborative community of developers and start-ups looking to develop the next generation of cloud innovations.

“Engineering is where Bristol stands out,” agrees CEO of High Tech Bristol and Bath, Dr John Bradford. “The engineering heritage in Bristol is what’s driven the cloud computing thing; what’s raised it is the cross over between that engineering expertise and the creative industries. The early work with HP was a very technical engineering challenge, but it was the overlap with the film industry that gave them the opportunity to test it.”

It’s opened up a world of economic opportunity in the city, bringing high value jobs and weighty new business residents.

“Cloud computing is democratising the IT industry and providing opportunities for start-ups to develop, test, launch and scale quickly and cost effectively,” says Phil. “As a result, many companies are keen to relocate and set up their development teams. Given the significant presence of cloud software, R&D capabilities and talent in Bristol we can expect to see continued growth and prosperity of the cloud computing scene in the region, as well as the number of digital startups coming out of the city.”

Strava is one example of a cloud-reliant company that has chosen Bristol as its European hub, almost certainly for the high level technology cluster and cloud expertise.

“Cloud will become an increasingly large and important part of Bristol’s economy,” Phil predicts. “This industry provides environmentally sustainable well-paid employment and can also spawn a generation of new startups developing products and services with global reach, reinforcing the city’s reputation as an innovation hub on the global stage, attracting more investment.”

“If we’re lucky we’ll see other San Francisco companies chose Bristol as the place to operate from for the European market,” concludes Manley. “That could be extremely valuable if we can monopolise it.”

Read more: Bristol leading the smart city way