August Deals & Appointments 

Deals

28.08: Citylets, the residential property letting firm, has partnered with DLT technology specialist Wallet.Services, to offer what is thought to be the world’s first blockchain-enabled private rented sector database.

21.08: First Scottish Group, the public registers search firm based in Dalgety Bay, has been bought by US financial services provider Eli Global.

17.08: Corporate innovation firm Vivolution has been appointed to lead a new Fintech Network Integrator service in Scotland providing take-to-market and investment sourcing services.

14.08:  The Improvement Service has appointed four technology partners to further develop its myaccount public services platform. They are TCS, Brightsolid, Yoti, and Wallet.Services. The new contracts will “help myaccount maintain current services while developing new technologies and innovations to help meet emerging and future needs”.

14.08: IT services provider CGI and HALO Scotland announced a partnership to create employment opportunities at the Kilmarnock urban regeneration initiative. The two organisations said they will develop technologies that will “provide young people and current workforces with the skills in cyber, digital, space technology, health and finance to needed to excel in tomorrow’s world”.

13.08: Glasgow agency After Digital has been contracted to design and build Honolulu Museum’s new online platform. Teams from both met at last year’s Tessitura Learning and Community Conference,  on the flight deck of the USS Midway.

The success comes on the back of a successful bid for the website redesign and development of Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre. Members of the After Digital team have already visited the Theatre in Chicago to complete the initial discovery process.

“There have been some landmark moments in our past, like winning our first client in London and I feel this is another one,” said After Digital’s Managing Director, David Johnstone.

“Not only continuing to win clients in North America, but for an agency HQ’d in Glasgow to be working with such prestigious organisations, and to have a client halfway around the world, is a testament to the quality of work we are doing and how small the world is becoming!”

07.08: England’s qualifications authority Ofqual (Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) has selected Aberdeen-based Oracle Platinum Partner Inoapps to implement cloud finance, human capital management, recruitment, and onboarding solutions.

Appointments

30.08: Technology Scotland announced a continued place on its advisory board for Ben Hanley, founder and director of Enigma People Solutions, the recruitment firm which is also continuing as corporate sponsor for 2018-19.

29.08: Interface has appointed five members to its strategic board, from industry, the college sector, and the newly formed UK government innovation organisation UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). They are:

• Stuart Bain, chief executive, Design LED Products;
• Brian Brown, director of ARMED (Early Intervention & Prevention Solutions), HAS Technology Group;
• Liz Connolly, vice-principal, corporate development and innovation, West College Scotland;
• Dr Colin Cooper, head of business networks, Innovate UK;
• Yekemi Otaru, managing director and founder, Yo! Marketing.

28.08: Iomart board member Ian Steele has taken up the chairmanship of the cloud computing firm, succeeding Ian Ritchie who announced with the company’s final results in June that he would not seek re-election. Steele, a former senior partner for Scotland and Northern Ireland at accounting firm Deloitte, is also a non-executive director of STV.

22.08: Fintech firm Nucleus has recruited Sam Hampton-Smith as head of product development to add to the platform’s technology capabilities. Hampton-Smith has joined Nucleus from Edinburgh-based cybersecurity firm ZoneFox, where he was head of engineering and user experience.

20.08: Legal tech startup SnapDragon has strengthened its management team with the appointment of Alexis Ovenstone, as head of marketing, and Kieron Smith, as product manager. It follows the launch of Swoop, SnapDragon’s DIY brand monitoring SaaS platform.

SnapDragon IP is an online monitoring service for SMEs to find and resolve instances of online intellectual property infringement.

16.08: Edge Testing Solutions has appointed Kelly White to lead growth across the north-west of England and Julian Lawless for the Yorkshire region.

16.08: Systal Technology Solutions has appointed John Bidgood, formerly of IBM, chief technology officer from IBM and Linda Anderson has also been recruited to the position of Marketing Manager. Systal has enjoyed a run of high-profile project and client wins in recent months, including a large unification and integration project for a global organisation. In January, it created 30 high-skill incident management jobs in its growing at its head office.

13.08: The Information Commissioner’s Office has appointed Simon McDougall as Executive Director for Technology Policy and Innovation, to lead “new approaches to information rights practice and promoting the legally compliant processing of personal data as a core element of new technologies and business systems”. McDougall is currently managing director of Promontory, a risk management and regulatory compliance consulting firm acquired in 2016 by IBM, where he founded and led a global privacy practice.

09.08: The former chief technology officer at Skyscanner, the global travel search giant, has joined the NHS in Scotland to help deliver a new national digital health service. Dr Alistair Hann, who worked at the Edinburgh-headquartered tech ‘unicorn’ until it was sold for £1.4bn last year to Chinese online travel company Ctrip, is spearheading a project to roll out the new ‘National Digital Service’ for citizens and NHS staff alike.

03.08: Scottish technology firm SHE Software has strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of Chris Rydings as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). With more than 20 years’ experience in the IT sector, Rydings joins SHE Software from international IT service management firm, Axios Systems, where he served as global CTO.