The company that is now Igatech Consulting was incorporated in Adelaide on 10 January 1983 as Futuresoft Systems. In 1981 and 1982, as well as developing software and systems for the Jindalee over-the-horizon radar in Alice Springs, I had been working in my spare time developing software in Fortran on a PDP11 for some friends to maintain records of open futures contracts, collect market close prices from Reuters using a 300 baud acoustic coupled modem, and work out whether margin calls were needed. There was nothing like this in the broking business, so we incorporated Futuresoft Systems to sell this software.
During 1984 I wrote a share registry package for another friend, and in 1985 we took control of Futuresoft Systems and renamed it IGA Technology after the market segments of Industry, Government and Agriculture. It took until 2007 to find a customer in agriculture!
We ran the share registry as Share and Unit Registry Services on a PDP11 until 2004 – an enormous lifetime for a software package that survived migration from RSX11 to DOS to Windows, and across Y2K.
In 1994, my wife Grace had been working as a DBA and Education Manager for Oracle in Adelaide when an opportunity arose for her to start an independent consulting business. At that time she and I took over the shares in the company and we launched into the world of database consulting. In 1997 we realized that we had a business model capable of growth, and started hiring consulting staff. One of our first employees was Tony Dahlin, whom many of you will remember. Tony came to us from BHP-IT, the beginning of a long association with BHP-IT alumni and Whyalla people.
In 1998 two significant opportunities set us onto a path for growth. Firstly, Oracle decided to set up a new channels partner program, and invited us to become Oracle Certified. Since we already had the staff certifications needed, we were actually the first Oracle certified Partner in Australia. This opened the doors for us to retail Oracle software, and thence to a wider market for services.
Secondly, Laurie Burgess in BAE Systems invited us to tender for a software support team subcontract for the Jindalee radar. Following a recruitment campaign, we were able to hire a great team out of BHP-IT (which was imploding at the time), and we were successful in our tender. We are still working on that contract today, almost 10 years on, and Gavin Scott is still with us from that original hire – Thanks Gavin. BAE has been very important to our success.
Through the late 90s we grew revenue rapidly, not least because of large Oracle licence sales as companies rushed into internet experiments. As a result we reached #10 on the BRW list of fastest growing companies in Australia – a major achievement!
In 1999 we restructured the company and shortened our name from IGA Technology to Igatech – 6 syllables to two. Incidentally it amuses me that the WWW acronym for World Wide Web has 9 syllables compared to the original 3.
After Y2K, the dot com crash and GST, the database product market slowed down and we turned our attention to Oracle Financials support, mainly from our Melbourne office – although our second contract, in 1994, had been for project management of a Financials implementation at flinders Uni. The Fins business peaked in 2002 with a very large contract to install and configure Oracle Financials for NT Power Water Corporation, for over 600 users. The contract included liquidated damages of $100,000 a week if we missed the production deadline! We made the deadline and stayed with them in a support role for 5 years.
Around 2004 Oracle decided to go to market aggressively with a preconfigured version of Oracle financials aimed at small to medium business, and asked us if we would act as a distribution channel to the market. We spent a lot of effort on marketing and sales, but the SMB customers decided that Oracle was too complex for them, and Oracle made the package unusable by falling out with the configuration supplier. This cost us dearly, and we had to restructure and refocus on our core business here in Adelaide.
From 2004 to the end of 2006, Velocity Systems took a controlling shareholding in Igatech and drove rationalization. However it was not a happy marriage, and in December 2006 they sold their shares to Julie Irwin, who has in Acknowledge-DB a company in Brisbane very similar to Igatech. Acknowledge recently celebrated its 10th birthday, another milestone!
Julie and I share a similar attitude to, and belief in, a data management services business, and in the past year we have seen Igatech returning to the growth and profitability of its earlier years.
Everything we have achieved in the past 25 years is the result of the people in this room, past and present staff and customers, working together in teams to deliver business value. I sincerely thank you all, and I hope you will be able to join Julie and me in the future to celebrate our next milestones!