Advanced Television

Sky creating new innovation centre

May 21, 2018

Sky has unveiled plans to create and build a dedicated innovation centre on its Osterley campus in West London as it continues its push into developing world leading consumer technology. The space will house an ever-growing number of technology engineers and software developers focusing on innovation across Sky’s broadcast and streaming platforms, consumer products and the latest content innovations including virtual reality.

The Centre, totalling around 70,000 square feet, is being designed to create a new space where Sky’s most inventive, minds can come together to match customer insight with rapidly changing technology requirements. By creating this shared space and working across the customer value chain, Sky says it will enhance its ability to meet its customer’s needs.

The creation of the Innovation Centre aims to further strengthen Sky’s tech expertise, adding to Sky’s existing tech sites in Leeds and Milan. With three dedicated technology hubs, the Group says it will be in an even stronger position to extend its leadership in delivering customers the best viewing and user experience in Europe.

As part of Sky’s commitment to attracting and developing more women in tech roles and to address the shortage of female talent in the industry, the new centre will become the home of the company’s new Get into Tech for Young Women scheme. Based on the success of Sky’s Get into Tech course, which has already helped over 100 women train to be coders, the new programme will provide girls of school leaving age the chance to train for free as a coder, with further opportunities at the Sky Software Academy when they have completed the course. This is just one of a number of programmes Sky is running to encourage more women to consider roles in tech and engineering.

The re-development of Sky’s campus has included the construction of five new buildings designed to promote the free flow of people and ideas, enabling talent to collaborate and deliver the best outcomes for customers.

Jeremy Darroch, Group Chief Executive of Sky, commented: “Sky customers have always enjoyed cutting edge technology and the best products available – from satellite to streaming Sky has led the way. The launch of this dedicated innovation centre will enable us to push the boundaries even further. The development of the west London campus reflects Sky’s journey over the past 29 years. Just as we have moved from porta-cabins to a world-class working environment we have also grown from a satellite business to Europe’s leading direct to consumer media company with content, consumer technology and innovation at its core. We have achieved this by always putting customers at the heart of everything we do and in every decision we make.”

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