Christchurch IT scene: Nurturing an ecosystem

Jade Software sees mobile application platforms as new growth area, CEO moves to Auckland

John Ascroft signed on as the fifth developer at Jade Software in the early 1980s and since then he has watched staff numbers grow from 10 to 350 people, and annual revenue increase to $50 million, 70 percent of which is earned offshore.

Now its chief innovation officer, Ascroft wants to grow the local IT community around Jade Software.

“We are looking now to outsource some development, we have had some meetings with local companies about that concept,” he says.

“From our point of view it gives us more scalability because we can take on more work without having to hire more staff. We also help to build up the community in Christchurch so people don’t have to leave here for work.

“Nothing would made us happier than to have 20 companies clustered around taking work from Jade, as well as some from other places. We would like to see Jade grow to be a much larger company, but we would also like to float the water up and lift other people up around us.”



One of the areas Ascroft is targeting is mobile applications. He has assembled a small team of developers (pictured above, from left Hadley Trounson, John Ascroft, Mark Cox and Tyler Power) who are working on creating the framework, which will allow large enterprise systems to integrate with multiple mobile platforms.

“Applications Program Interface (API) runs on the phone and talks back to the server,” he says. “Encryption, security, authentication, a lot of that plumbing is important in the enterprise world, so we’re providing a mobile enterprise integration platform,” he says.

“It lets you get all the plumbing to hook up to your serious enterprise system with the devices you want to use. We have APIs for the Android and Mobile 7 as well [as the iPhone]. We’re also looking at other platforms.”

(Smudge Apps co-founder Toby Vincent mentioned that API was often the most costly part of the process – as websites in which the data is taken from to populate the app are often not built as separate data sources.)

The following day when I meet Jade CEO Craig Richardson, who recently moved from Christchurch to base himself in Auckland to be closer to Jade's New Zealand customer base.

He tells me the product – under the Joob brand – is a few weeks away from release and its market is both app developers and enterprise companies.

Richardson says there has been interest from Australian and New Zealand customers, mostly in the FMCG, health and logistics industries. “The mobile enterprise application platform market is worth about $1 billion a year globally and it’s growing at about 20 percent a year we think,” he says.

While Richardson sells the product to big business, Ascroft remains back at base nurturing the developers. During my visit to Jade Ascroft introduced me to the mobile developers work. Their workspace is cluttered with gym equipment and there are jokes among them that they would sleep there if they could. Ascroft first got them inspired by running an app competition among all the developers 18 months ago – the app that was downloaded the most won. It was lesson in the power of the market.

“The technically best product didn’t win. The best product was the best total product that had the most marketing appeal. It was noughts and crosses with selectable playing pieces, you could change it to be pop stars. The key to it was that one of the pieces was Miley Cyrus and the guy just got zillions of hits and Miley Cyrus and the thing got downloaded.”

Ascroft and Richardson have also reached out to the Dunedin community and got involved with The Distiller (profiled in Computerworld last year). It is a group of developers who collaborate on a range of IT-related projects. “We’re learning as much from them as they are from us. They want to know from us how to go to market, how do they scale,” he says. “At some point there’s going to be a great idea come out of there which we’d like to say ‘we can help you guys take it to market’.”

* This is the fifth in a series of articles about the Christchurch IT scene. Tomorrow Computerworld talks to CIOs at Tait Electronics, the Christchurch Casino. In the meantime, check out the details of the next Fry Up Debate to be held in Christchurch on 1 March, the moot is: 'South Islanders will be the most innovative when it comes to fast fibre networks'.