National Instruments offers helping hand to SMEs

A grant programme designed to help small firms in the growing embedded devices sector has been launched by National Instruments in the UK.

The firm, which has been offering  low cost training and certification to unemployed scientists and engineers since last year has now expanded the scheme to include small and medium sized companies developing embedded devices in areas such as medical, energy and green engineering who will be offered grants for software, support and training.
NI stated in a press release that the programme has been launched  in recognition of the fact that many innovative advances in technology over the past 20 years have been developed by small, entrepreneurial companies. The new programme will award up to £25,000 in software, support and training to selected SMEs that are evaluating the NI platform as a component of their devices.

The goal of the new grant programme is to help these companies reduce the cost and complexity of development by providing them with technology such as the National Instruments LabVIEW graphical programming environment.