Our TechMarketView’s 2018 Research Theme – Breaking the Boundaries (see TechMarketView research theme: Breaking the Boundaries) – is designed to explain in just three words our view that ICT market dynamics this year (and beyond) require organisations to behave differently, to ‘break their own boundaries’, if they are to fully benefit from an organisational drive to digitally transform.

One of the areas we see this being important is in the pursuit of digital skills. We have, many times, asserted that, with certain skills in short supply, software and services suppliers would need to be savvy in order to have, at their disposal, the right skills at the right time. And let’s be frank, not everyone is getting this right. When we speak to end user organisations – the clients of the SITS suppliers – it's becoming all too common to hear that suppliers are missing out on opportunities because they simply can’t scale up quickly enough to meet demand.

With all that in mind, Sopra Steria’s latest announcement is pertinent. The company has announced that it is partnering with the publisher Talao to “create a subcontractor skill-management platform built using Ethereum Blockchain.” The idea is that freelancers who work on projects overseen by Sopra Steria will receive a certification for the skills they have developed. In turn, they will be able to access Group opportunities and start a conversation with Sopra Steria managers.

It is great to see innovative initiatives from software and services suppliers to tackle this problem. Of course, there are limitations to this tool, as it appears those certified must have worked on Sopra Steria projects. The digital skills pool is clearly much wider than that. And there are freelance marketplaces arriving on the scene that work in a similar way to Talao. For example, CanYa; which also utilises blockchain to make sure that reviews of freelancers are verifiable. Though CanYa doesn’t go as far as offering certifications, and focuses on more than just digital skills, it highlights that, driven by the gig economy, freelance marketplaces are rapidly developing to suit he needs of the market.

Much has been written about the role of the Board chair within publicly listed (PLC) organisations, but not much has been written about The role of the Board Chair within privately held growth businesses.

Spectrum has published a new report as a result of research of the views and experiences of board chairs, investors and CEOs.

The report’s purpose is to facilitate a greater understanding of the role and contribution of the Board Chair amongst key stakeholders, and to optimise the contribution of the Chair to the private, growth company.  The research findings challenge some commonly-held assumptions.

To download a complimentary copy of the report please follow this link ‘The role of the Board Chair within privately held growth businesses’

www.spectrum-ehcs.com

Eggplant was one of our Great British Scaleup candidates earlier this year – see Great British Scaleups Programme: GBS4 candidates. Having watched the company over several years and seen a step change in its strategy over the last twelve months, we recently caught up again with CEO John Bates and CTO Antony Edwards to learn more about the UK arm of the business, as well as to investigate its public sector footprint.

To recap, the software testing product and solutions provider caught our eye as it has realigned its strategy with the direction of the market to become more relevant to its customers and prospects. Eggplant's strategy is to test the CX as well as the code, to improve business outcomes. Read more...

Consensys, founded in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, is building the applications, infrastructure and approaches to enable a decentralised world, with Blockchain a major focus. Along with an operation now encompassing around 1,000 people working on numerous initiatives, Consensys also invests in start-ups.

The latest start-up is DrumG Technologies which has received US$6.5m in a Series A minority investment with Consensys as sole investor. Joseph Lubin will sit on the DrumG board.

DrumG is working on two applications focused on capital markets. Its Titanium Network initiative provides a decentralised consensus data solution to support investment bank trading and valuation operations, based on the Ethereum platform. The second solution focuses on post-trade reconciliation and is expected to be built on R3’s Corda platform.

This Fintech funding highlights several advantageous approaches to the development of solutions. Firstly, the Consensys model provides a tight-knit incubator community for a large number of entrepreneurial teams developing new sources of value largely based on blockchain. Also, DrumG’s approach is to work with its founding institutions to determine which distributed ledger technology is most appropriate for the solution and for connection into the pre-existing enterprise and ecosystem networks. DrumG’s 20-strong team also looks well-stocked with domain expertise and experience.

DrumG, with Consensys, looks like it has every opportunity to benefit from the community effect to enable rapid application development, taking a business-first focus to drive a (relatively) technology-agnostic approach as it seeks the correct solution.

As an aside, the business is also being set up in Bermuda, highlighting the competitiveness of the Fintech world. Bermuda can presumably offer a more predictable regulatory climate (and a warmer one) than a Brexit-facing London.

Due to the fact that the analyst concerned was clearly asleep at the switch, the recent UKHotViews post The mounting cost of digital skills gave salary figures as being per month. They should of course have been per annum.

Many thanks to UKHotViews reader Graham Kennedy for pointing out the error. The guilty party has promised to ease off the gin on his cornflakes.

There's more good news from London-based e-invoicing software firm CloudTrade, one of the first companies to participate in the TechMarketView Great British Scaleup programme.

Just a few weeks ago, CloudTrade raised £2m to accelerate growth with the support of Great British Scaleup programme Advisory Sponsor, ScaleUp Group (see CloudTrade's head in the clouds with £2m funding round). CEO David Cocks is quickly putting the new money to good use, recruiting Philip Padfield and Richard Moore to its board, as Chairman and Investment Director, respectively, alongside the appointment of Sunil Purohit as Chief Financial Officer, and Tara Burghardt as Marketing Manager.

Padfield was most recently CEO of Science Warehouse, which was recently acquired by Advanced (see Advanced accelerates cloud strategy with Science Warehouse). Moore joined CloudTrade's board from Calculus Capital, which led the funding round.

The rich experience these new appointments bring will make a significant difference to helping Cocks and his team achieve CloudTrade's growth potential. Onwards and upwards!

If you are a UK tech entrepreneur and want free advice in scaling up your business, then follow David Cocks' example and apply for the next TechMarketView Great British Scaleup event to be held in November. Applications close this Friday and you can find out more here.

Various parts of UK Government – Ministry of Justice, Home Office, HM Land Registry, HMRC to name a few – have been investigating the potential uses and benefits of blockchain, or other forms of distributed ledger technology (DLT), for some time. Some onlookers, like the public service think tank, Reform, have expressed their views that Government should be doing more – see  Government could make better use of blockchain.

This week it has been announced that HM Land Registry is taking its blockchain investigations one step further through its Digital Street project. It is partnering with Methods (see Simplified Methods makes good progress) to utilise R3’s blockchain platform, Corda. In investigating the benefits of the technology for the land registration and property buy-sell process, it will be supported by a team of experts from R3, Blockchain Digital and their wider partner network. The aim is to up HM Land Registry’s game and make it the best land registry in the world for speed, ease of use and an open approach to data.

The R3 Consortium consists of many of the large banks and, as such, has been predominantly focused on the financial services sector (see Understanding Blockchain). Interestingly, with UK Governnment strong open source advocates, HM Land Registry has gone with R3’s Corda rather than the other open source alternatives, Hyperledger or Ethereum. The logic is that Corda suits its needs in term of “security, privacy, interoperability and the smart contract flow framework, originally designed for financial services”.

This is an interesting application of blockchain and has been previously identified as a suitable process for distributed ledger technology. Its application could significantly alter the way participants in the property market interact… hence why the next step will be to enable the property eco-system (solicitors, banks, surveyors, estate agents) to join the Digital Street Community. This will be long project involving many stakeholders; time will tell whether blockchain is really the answer to making the Land Registry world-class. Meanwhile the investigation of more radical cross-Government uses of blockchain, e.g. for identity management, would be welcomed by many, in the current Brexit-fuelled, resource-constrained, and cautious, environment, these types of focused project are far more likely.

Preservica plays a part in the lesser addressed end of the data supply chain – active digital preservation – to future proof digital content. The ‘active’ tag refers to its work on migrating customers’ old data to new file formats so that it remains usable over time. And as that migration may happen many times as tech rolls forward, this is a process of obsolescence avoidance.

The Oxford and Boston based company (originally a subsidiary of analytics and data science company Tessella, who gained independence subsequent to Tessella’s acquisition by Altran)  has secured $10m funding from Mobeus Equity Partners (to be delivered in two batches) to drive product development and scale the business via the partner model.

The size of the investment is an endorsement of Preservica’s potential and with a public and private sector customer base that includes HSBC, the World Bank, Associated Press, BT, Amnesty International, Yale University, MoMA, the UK National Archives, Transport for London and National Rail, Preservica is proving it has commercial appeal. Although the details were not disclosed, Preservica reported its fastest growth in revenues during 2018. When we last had sight of its numbers the company reported £2.6m turnover in 2014, 32% yoy growth.

Having taken the time to gather/prepare/store data, and given that value extraction is still work in progress for organisations, there is a lot to be said for future proofing that precious data. 

Further to my post on Friday, the SEC, Elon Musk and Tesla seem to have settled their dispute. Tesla has agreed to appoint a Chairman with Musk continuing as CEO. Fines of $20m will be paid by both the company and Musk. 

Although I welcome the appointment of a Chairman, I still think Musk needs a COO. As I have oft said, ‘Musk needs a Tim Cook as badly as Steve Jobs needed him’.  

Tesla also announced a near 90% increase in cars produced in Q3 compared to Q2 - meeting its target of 50,000-55,000 units for the Model 3. 

Musk says he wants Tesla to be profitable in Q3. Maybe if he fails he really will have to face up to that ‘bonehead’ question of whether he needs to raise more funds as Tesla is burning $1b cash per quarter. 

Tesla faces more and more competition by the week. Just look at the impressive new BMW 3 Series announced at the Paris Motor Show yesterday which also comes in a hybrid version from day one (and an all electric version in the future)  and a host of driver-assist features. Indeed more ’toys’  than even a Holway would need!

Yet another scoop by the esteemed Economic Times of India, which reports that leading India-based services giant TCS is offering freshers (new graduates) with digital skills almost twice the pay than other tech graduates (around Rs 3.5 lakh p.a. – currently roughly $5,000 p.a). Digitally skilled freshers will get Rs 6.5 lakh (say $9,000 p.a).

It is a truism that where TCS (or indeed any of the offshore services majors) goes with fresher salaries, the others must follow. And not just the India-centric players. Global SIs and BPOs with significant Indian operations – such as IBM, Accenture, Capgemini, et al – will have to step into line too if they want to get the pick of the digital crop.

Although the numbers are small according the ET's report (1,000 freshers in the case of TCS, vs the tens of thousands typically hired each year by the industry), the ripple-through effect may well lead to squeezed margins if the players are unable to lift the premium they already charge for such in-demand technical skills.

Note: An earlier version of this post referred to these salaries as being per month rather than per annum. Ooops my bad!!

Another great catch by the all-seeing Economic Times of India, which spotted that London-based Jeff Heenan-Jalil, latterly Wipro Senior Vice President & Global Head: Healthcare, Life Science and Services, has jumped ship to head up US-based RPA (robotic process automation) software firm IPSoft's operations in Europe.

I first met Heenan-Jalil back in 2010 soon after he took over as European head at Wipro (see Attrition spikes at Wipro). What marked him out as breaking the mould was that Heenan-Jalil is a Kiwi and was (if my memory serves) the first non-India-born executive at Wipro's top table. He rose rapidly through the ranks and took over leadership of Wipro's HLS sector in 2016 when incumbent rising star, Sangita Singh, left to lead the same role at Infosys (see Changing of the guard at Wipro) but moved to IBM in July this year (see Singh has her head in IBM's Cloud).

We really haven't heard much about IPsoft's adventures on this side of the pond since the irrepressible Terry Walby left as UK MD (see Autonomics does it for IPsoft) to found RPA startup Thoughtonomy (see Thoughtonomy: from ‘Battler’ to Scale-Up) – and hasn't he done well (see Tech industry 'Oscars' an outstanding success).

Heenan-Jalil will surely have his work cut out to get IPsoft really motoring in Europe, especially now that there are many well-established players in the RPA market.  But if anyone has a chance of doing it, it is he.

With the popularity of our daily e-newsletter increasing, we offer advertisers the opportunity to place a 'Sponsored Post' directly within the newsletter.

As UKHotViews is posted directly to our Twitter feed your ad will be viewed by our increasing number of Twitter followers. All of which means your advert will be seen by many of the most influential decision makers in the UK tech scene. 

How can Sponsored Posts be used?

There are no restrictions on the content of Sponsored Posts, so it’s entirely up to you. They are well-suited to topics that we wouldn’t normally cover in UKHotViews, and could, for example, be used to highlight:

• Product launches & events
• Business-to-business services
• ‘White paper’ report findings
• Contract wins
• Changes in strategic direction
• Recruitment
• Webinars

Banners

We also offer the opportunity to have your own banner message on our daily eNewsletter: UKHotViews and on our website in three webpage locations UKHotViews, UKHotViewsExtra and ‘News’. Gold and Silver banners will be positioned at the top and bottom of both the newsletters and webpages.

We have above industry average click through rates and reach over 20,000 readers per month from the Software and IT Services and Business Process Services sector, Government, Local Government, industry end users, investors. professional services firms and more.

We are happy to tailor advertising packages for your needs. For pricing and further information on how you can advertise through TechMarketView, please contact us on info@techmarketview.com.

Applications close tomorrow, Friday 5th October.

If you believe that your business could grow faster but are not sure how to do it – or you are pondering an eventual exit – then here's a fantastic opportunity to get expert practical advice absolutely free.

The TechMarketView Great British Scaleup programme has already helped founders and CEOs of nearly 30 UK tech SMEs such as CloudTrade and Pivotal iQachieve landmark results and set many others on their growth journeys.

All you have to do is apply for a place in the next Great British Scaleup event, which is being held on Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th November at the London offices of Great British Scaleup Programme Official Supporter techUK.

You will spend 90 minutes in closed session with TechMarketView Managing Partner Anthony Miller and other top TechMarketView Research Directors, along with experienced advisors from Great British Scaleup programme Advisory Sponsor, ScaleUp Group, the team of successful tech entrepreneurs that have been responsible for accelerating growth and achieving successful exits at many well-known tech companies.

We will assist you to identify the obstacles to growth and offer pragmatic options for helping your business achieve its potential. You will also have your company rated on our proprietary ScaleUp Growth Index® scorecard so you have an objective measure by which you can track your scale-up progress.

Your business will also get huge exposure by being featured in TechMarketView UKHotViews, arguably the most influential daily commentary on the UK tech scene and beyond.

It's easy to apply – just fill in the application form on the TechMarketView website here by close of business Friday 5th October 2018. There is no charge to participate.

There's more information on the Great British Scaleup page on our website or if you have any queries just call or email Anthony Miller (020 3002 8463 amiller@techmarketview.com).

I had been wondering why locum placement platform Locum's Nest needed any more funding as the business model for recruitment agencies is usually simple and cash-generative.

But when I looked more closely at its website, I realised that Locum's Nest's platform is as much a locum management system as it is a recruitment tool – indeed it can take at least two weeks for an NHS Trust to implement the platform with the help of Locum's Nest's consultants. Fortunately, doctors who want to register on Locum's Nest only need to download a mobile app.

I tell you this because Locum's Nest has raised a further £3m from Albion Capital, which led its first funding round in July last year (see Albion lays £1.1m egg in Locum’s Nest).

While I take minor issue with Locum's Nest's strapline, "cutting out the inefficient, ineffective and expensive agency middleman", on account of the fact that Locum's Nest is, in effect, a 'middleman', this is well mitigated by its operating model which directly connects 'buyers' with 'sellers' (to put it at its most basic). Of course, Locum's Nest takes it skim off the top as traditional agencies do, although they claim to charge significantly lower fees.

Locum's Nest appears to compete directly with longer established startup, Lantum (the erstwhile Network Locum– see GP marketplace Network Locum connects with £5.3m), though Lantum's focus is more oriented towards doctors managing their locum sessions rather than Locum's Nest's focus of NHS Trusts managing their locum requirements. Two sides of the same coin, methinks.

But if using technology can help cut costs and improve efficiency in the NHS to the ultimate benefit of the patient (see Babylon's GP app ad banned as 'misleading'), then that is surely a good thing.

Not all Healthtech is good Healthtech, it seems.

NHS 'darling' Babylon Health has come under fire from the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which yesterday issued a ruling that the London Underground poster for its GP at hand service was misleading and may no longer be used. The ASA made similar findings against Babylon's Facebook post, website and mobile app.

The issue was with the GP at hand strapline, "See an NHS GP in minutes for free 24/7”. The ASA had received complaints that the ads did not make it clear that patients had to deregister from their current GP practice and that it would take some time for their registration on GP at Hand to take effect. Further, GP at hand was only available to patients who lived or worked in the catchment area of specific GP surgeries.

While Babylon put up a spirited defence, the ASA ruled against them on all counts.

TechMarketView subscription service clients and UKHotViews Premium subscribers can read more about the NHS 'Global Digital Exemplars' in our recent UKHotViews Extra post, £200m for new Global Digital Exemplars. Let's hope the money will be well spent.

DXC has acquired theTexas-based product design consultancy Argodesign. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The purchase adds the IT services giant to the growing list of major SI’s which have bought into the creative digital agency arena. Earlier this week Capgemini announced its fifth such acquisition in the last three years.

Founded in 2014, Argodesign comprises a 45-person studio in Austin servicing a world-wide client base. The firm’s primary focus is on interface design and user experience. Its capabilities range from product strategy to brand identity. The company will continue to run independently, but it will collaborate closely with DXC in the digital transformation arena.

Argodesign is by no means the first product design consultancy to see the appeal of the blue-chip client access offered by nesting under the wing of a SITS multinational. Service design specialists Fjord agreed to be bought by Accenture Interactive in 2013 and has seen its global ranks swell six-fold over the last five years. Our recent report $5 Billion and Counting…Is the SI Creative Agency Gamble Paying-Off provides more a detailed analysis of this trend.

It is also easy to understand why DXC wants to establish a credible strategic innovation and creative design capability. Its traditional revenue streams remain under significant downward pressure (see here). The need for the company to unearth and secure larger volumes of larger scale digital engagements is of paramount importance and transforming customer experience is now a top priority on most board agendas. It is, however, hard to see how much impact a small regional acquisition will be able to have on a $22bn global organisation. It would be reasonable to assume that Argodesign won’t be the only creative consultancy purchase that DXC makes.

Northgate Public Services (NPS) has been selected by Revenue Scotland to deliver a tax administration and management solution for devolved taxes in Scotland. The contract is worth £3.5m over ten years (initial five-year period, followed by optional extensions of three and two years).

Revenue Scotland was established as a Non-Ministerial Department in 2015 and is the tax authority responsible for the administration and collection of Scotland’s devolved taxes (Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) and Scottish Landfill Tax (SLfT)), which came into effect on 1 April 2015, replacing their UK equivalents (Stamp Duty Land Tax and UK Landfill Tax). During 2017-18 Revenue Scotland raised £707m through the two taxes, with 99.1% of tax returns submitted online.

The contract will see NPS’ software used to facilitate the collection and management of the LBTT and SLfT. It is also expected to cover Air Departure Tax in Scotland once it is implemented—earlier this year the Scottish Government and UK Government agreed that it would not be possible to introduce the tax in April 2019; no revised date for introduction has yet been set.

NPS will provide an online system designed to build on and improve Revenue Scotland’s current processes and more easily accommodate any new taxes, such as Air Departure Tax, as they are introduced.

NPS beat two other suppliers to the contract, which, according to the contract award notice, Revenue Scotland initially estimated to be worth £7m. However, it’s a strategically important win for the business and helps extend NPS’ footprint in Scotland where it already works with every local authority and enables the collection of c.60% of Scottish council tax and business rates.

The US$173m acquisition of start-up RedLock will strengthen Palo Alto Networks’ cyber security portfolio, particularly when it comes to helping IT departments comply with data protection regulation and governance requirements as they shift more information and applications into the public cloud.

Founded in 2015, RedLock has offices in the US and India and has raised around US$12m of funding to date. It specialises in maintaining governance and compliance of enterprise data and workloads spread across multiple public cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

That is significant given the growing volume of information and applications both public and private sector organisations are shifting off-premise to meet cost optimisation and digital transformation requirements (subscribers can read our Infrastructure Services Market Trends & Forecasts to 2021 report here).

The big fear for IT managers and CIOs alike is that sensitive data subject to the terms of the EU General Data Protection Regulation and UK Data Privacy Act 2018 (as well industry governance frameworks like PCI-DSS, SOC 2 etc) is hard to track and verify as compliant with those rules as it moves into somebody else’s cloud.

RedLock’s Cloud 360 compliance assurance solution uses APIs to monitor configuration, user activity and network traffic data as it travels through hybrid environments, employing machine learning to map any risks that could lead to a breach.

The two companies’ technology platforms look like they should dovetail nicely, but Palo Alto’s challenge will be to integrate Cloud 360 into the rest of its cloud security portfolio, which already includes the identity access management (IAM) technology acquired from Evident.IO, its Aperture cloud access security broker (CASB – read Cloud Access Security Brokers: Benefits and Opportunities) and its GlobalProtect mobile security service.

Sage Group has rejigged its leadership team following the surprise departure of CEO Stephen Kelly in August.

Following an interim period, Amanda Cusdin is announced as Chief People Officer, a move that “recognises her contribution to creating a culture that will support Sage’s ongoing transition into a great Software as a Service (SaaS) business”. Rob Reid, MD and EVP of (acquired, SaaS-first) Sage Intacct will join the Executive Committee, while EVP for strategy Keith Robinson takes on the role of Chief Strategy Officer and advisor to the executive committee. Both will report to CFO and interim COO Steve Hare.

These changes are all about accelerating the cloud transition – and it was the slower than desired pace of transition that was core to Kelly’s departure. However, as Richard Holway pointed out in Reflections on Kelly’s departure from Sage, the question was not whether Kelly succeeded but whether anyone else could have done any better. That’s the question hovering over the emerging management team. Reid and Robinson are experienced in driving cloud businesses so there is expertise to call on. However, the shape and skills of the overall leadership team will not become clear until a permanent CEO is appointed. At that point, the additional question will be how bold will he or she  be in reworking the portfolio to speed up cloud change.

PwC is expanding its regulatory compliance portfolio with the acquisition of KYC-PRO software from Belfast financial services advisory firm FSCom Ltd for an undisclosed sum.

It means FSCom can concentrate on its growing consultancy business (with a focus on payments services and e-money), while PwC adds anti money laundering and Know Your Customer (KYC) capabilities to its own regtech services business. These are key capabilities for financial services institutions on-boarding customers. Citing stats that by 2020 European banks will spend more than €1b on KYC, PwC sees a clear revenue opportunity.

The product will drop into the PwC Operate business in Belfast, which was set up to support demand for regulatory change in financial services and has been growing at a rapid pace – it nearly doubled staff numbers in the 12 months to June 2018, to around 1000 people.  

This acquisition is part of PwC’s investment in digital technology to reshape business services. As its latest results indicate (see PwC finds the consulting going heavy), although overall performance was respectable in FY18, growth in consulting slowed right down, while financial services revenue declined.