"This project is an innovative collaboration between three high-tech SMEs with global aspirations and arguably three of the best RTD performers in Europe. The project itself and the outcomes resulting from the work will have a unifying theme of innovation, flexibility, collaboration, and of delivering whole product solutions as a norm. In technology markets the goal is market share via whole product solutions. At the start of the development life cycle the whole product barely exists. At best there will be a core product surrounded by an envelope of custom services required to make the application work. In this early market visionaries commit to an incomplete product and use it as a foundation for fielding an application breakthrough. However, the challenge of driving out the service component and of providing a fully integrated commoditised product, where significant revenue can fund the building of valuable market share is beyond the reach of most SMEs. In fact innovation by SMEs is often characterized by products with a low R&D intensity and a limited view of markets, and very few companies ever establish products of international scale. The RAISME project will enable high-tech SMEs with niche skills to rapidly build and scale innovative ICT applications through the collaborative use of advanced “mashup” technology and cloud computing. The RAISME SMEs will be at the vanguard of a new business paradigm where the end-user becomes part of the product development lifecycle, thus accelerating it, and where importing innovations from the internet allows exploiting knowledge faster and productivity increases. The RTD performers who have developed state-of-the-art visualisation, optimisation and integration tools will boot-strap a series of niche applications brought to the project by the SMEs to properly exploit knowledge services. Additionally the anticipated project outcomes will help mobilise communities of high-performing SMEs compete in worldwide markets."