The ScaleQIT vision is to "develop a conceptual platform for potentially disruptive technologies, advance their scope and breadth and speed up the process of bringing them from the lab to the real world." ScaleQIT will address the engineering side of quantum information processing (QIP), analyzing and implementing realistic scenarios for scaling-up superconducting hybrid systems for quantum computing and quantum simulation. The work will be based on proven, well-functioning circuits and components that show great promise for integration into useful QIP systems. ScaleQIT will develop a quantum processor based on microwave resonators and waveguides coupling a small (5-10) number of superconducting qubits of the "transmon" type. It will achieve most of the functionalities required by DiVincenzo's criteria, and will meet many of the challenges defined by the European Quantum Information and Processing Roadmap. For the development of a useful scalable platform, the ScaleQIT project will address a wide range of challenging issues, and take them far beyond the state of the art for multi-qubit platforms, addressing several central issues: feed-back and feed-forward control; error correction; quantum memory; quantum interfaces; algorithms and protocols for computing and simulation; design of scalable architectures for high performance quantum computing.ScaleQIT aims for groundbreaking applications to quantum simulation of physical systems. If successful, it may already in the short term have a disruptive effect on the development of quantum information science. In the longer term, it can be expected to have a disruptive effect on the science of computation: combining functional processor units with, say, 10 qubits, into larger distributed systems will eventually have simulation power that rivals that of powerful digital computers. By really building and testing larger quantum-engineering systems, ScaleQIT will be a path-finder on the road to developing solid-state fault-tolerant quantum architectures.