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British software company joins the Hub
Pictured at the function recently held to welcome software consultancy eSay Solutions to The Innovation Hub are (ltr) Dr Neville Comins, CEO of The Innovation Hub, eSay Commercial Director Dr Moneeb Awan and Jill Sawers, Incubation and Entrepreneurship Manager at The Innovation Hub.
Seen here are members of the E-Say Solutions team which recently joined The Innovation Hub. From ltr Simon Farrimond, Dr Moneeb Awan, Colen Yates and Angela Kays from GEDA,
Dr Neville Comins CEO of The Innovation Hub and Angelo Manzoni from ISA. |
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British niche software applications company eSay Solutions has decided to base its research and development operations in South Africa, at The Innovation Hub in Pretoria.
Based in Bolton, Greater Manchester in North-West England, the company is a software consultancy which is now diversifying into writing specialised niche market applications especially for mobile platforms.
"We fix existing software, integrate software systems, and write bespoke software for new applications," summarises company Commercial Director Dr Moneeb Awan.
"Our original and main remit is to fix companies software problems, so we work with a wide variety of companies," he adds.
And, despite its small size - ten full-time staff in the UK and now three in this country - the company has access to a wide range of expertise.
Of the three founder-partners, two are software architecture experts and Dr Awan is a biochemist who specialised in basic research in cardiovascular disease before he entered the IT business arena.
"Our development team includes medical doctors and scientists as well as information technology (IT) specialists. I think this combination is unique in the UK," he says.
With this kind of expertise, the award winning company has identified two areas in which it plans to develop software.
The first is a spin-off from a recently completed contract from the UK Department of Trade and Industry to investigate how IT could benefit clinical drug trial. According to Dr Awan, sixty percent of drug Research & Development (R&D) budgets go to clinical drug trials, and everything is recorded on paper, resulting in reams of paper creating paperwork logjams of information.
"Mobile wireless technology will be instrumental platform in overcoming this," he points out, adding that this creates opportunities to develop novel IT solutions for clinical drug trials.
Simultaneously, the company is pursuing opportunities to develop novel IT solutions for outpatient monitoring, again deploying mobile platforms as the backbone of the solution.
"The aim is to do the R&D for these projects in South Africa, in co-operation with South African institutions such as the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of Pretoria," states Dr Awan.
The second area concerns use of the latest mobile wireless Internet connection system, known as GPRS, which will be used to replace the GSM system for relaying data communication.
With GPRS (which is becoming commercially available in South Africa and is readily available overseas), mobile systems such as laptops and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are permanently linked to the Internet, with the user paying only when data is transmitted, unlike with GSM where charges are based on time spent connected to the Internet. GPRS is thus far cheaper than GSM, the connection tends to be more robust providing better quality and greater reliability (less drop-out).
'We're writing software on mobile platforms, including PDAs, utilising GPRS connectivity. Our software will allow a truck driver to use a PDA to securely transmit data, including, in due course, payment data, back to the office, in real-time,' he explains.
South Africa was chosen as the country's R&D centre as a result of Dr Awan's own experience of the country from 1996 to 1999 when he was Chief Scientist at the Cape
Heart Centre, and was also responsible for setting up co-operation between University College London and UCT.
"So I experienced the skills base here at first hand, and the infrastructure and the communications capability, and realised that co-operation between our two countries was readily possible," he points out.
Moreover, the two countries are in virtually the same time zone and English is a main business and R&D language in South Africa.
Dr Awan firmly believes that, because of these key factors, and the government's commitment to the internship programme providing the essential skills base, South Africa is a much better place to work in compared to India, where eSay Solutions' competitors are heading.
"We want to be a local company with global presence, and our strategic aim is to supply the global market, not just the UK and South African markets. Our growth and success is founded on careful planning. We had moved into South Africa because it makes complete sense," concludes Dr Awan.
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