Cognizant opens London lab to help customers with digitisation

IT services company Cognizant has extended its network of digital innovation laboratories with the opening of a UK centre.

The London Collaboratory, as it is known, has joined similar Cognizant centres in Amsterdam, New York and Melbourne, where the company works with customers and partners on digital business challenges.

These labs bring technology experts from Cognizant and other IT suppliers together with customers to apply digital technologies to their business challenges. In a world where digital technology is disrupting traditional business models, suppliers are working closely with customers to combine business knowledge and technology expertise.

For example, through the centres, Cognizant aims to demonstrate how businesses can get value from technologies such as the internet of things, artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented reality. Teams will collaborate to create prototypes of digital products and services.

One company that has been working with Cognizant at its Collaboratory in Amsterdam is Deutsche Telekom.

“We found it to be the perfect environment for conducting ideation sessions, synthesising research results, creating prototypes and business models, and jointly finalising solution proposals,” said Deutsche Telekom vice-president Thomas Wind.

Michael Versace, global research director IDC, said: “Across all industries, businesses today are operating in a fast-changing market environment fuelled by many digital trends, where agility and accelerated innovation cycles are key to survival and future success.

“Our data shows that business executives are increasing their demands and reliance on partners such as Cognizant not only for industrial, functional and digital technology expertise, but also for new ways of tapping into this expertise in a collaborative way, which we’ve seen produce great innovation, more value and less risk for clients.”