Archive for the ‘ ICT ’ Category

EPiserver, Fox Technologies, Nimsoft and Qliktech

In a recent article [se-1], the Swedish information technology news site IT24 identifies 4 interesting investment prospects in the ITC sector; Episerver, Fox Technologies, Nimsoft and Qliktech. They all have experienced fast growth, include valuable IP, and have a quite impressive list of clients. The 3 first companies have participation from the Nordic VC fund Northzone, while Qliktech’s most important investor is the Swedish fund Industrifonden.

  • Episerver: Offers a range of content and community management products and services. It is highly profitable and have just reached 3000 customers. According to the company, the EPiServer CMS – is the world’s fastest growing commercial CMS platform. No wonder they are going public [en-1]. Third parties are continually adding modules and features [en-2].
  • Fox Technologies: Delivers advanced access control, servers, applications and desktops, with centralised access controls management across the IT infrastructure.
  • Nimsoft: Fast-growing supplier of unique solutions for the management and measurement of service levels, including levels in cloud computing.
  • Qliktech: Business intelligence software with a wide range of applications for different sectors and company sizes. Impressive growth in revenue and number of clients. IPO-ready.

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Entrepreneurship: Missing a Process?

I have been working as an entrepreneur with a technology-based project for the last 4 years, and have, during this period, also worked or cooperated with other entrepreneurs that were developing technology-based projects. In retrospect, it is clear that all of these projects had a lot of characteristics in common, including similar hurdles that had to be overcome.

Most tech start-ups have a product focus, including a good product development process, normally involving agile methods. On the other hand, a clear-cut business model based on proper market know-how is missing in the majority of start-up projects. Admittedly, some projects are so innovative that it is difficult to establish a market need, but in that case it is paramount to establish a process to obtain market intelligence as early as possible. Moreover, marketing, sales and distribution strategies are not prioritized early on. Typically, they come into focus at a much later stage, often too late.

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