HAMPSHIRE engineers at IT giant IBM have won the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award for an innovation that most people have never come across.

WebSphere MQ software has helped businesses save billions of pounds by providing a fail-safe means of exchanging business-critical information between computer systems.

WebSphere's development team, from IBM's Hursley laboratory, near Winchester, received the MacRobert Gold Medal and £50,000 prize in London from Prince Philip at the academy's awards dinner.