Falanx Group Ltd (LON:FLX) Executive Director Jay Abbott caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the acquisition of Cloudified Limited
Q1: An interesting announcement made with the acquisition of Cloudified Limited, can you tell us what exactly is Cloudified?
A1: Cloudified is a technology company that’s been around for quite a while now, run by a gentleman called Danny Waite who I’ve personally known for around 15 years. Cloudified sits in the software defined networking and network virtualised functions space which, if you’re not familiar with, is kind of the next generation of routing and switching and all that fundamental underpinning networking stuff. The company itself has been around for a very long time and has a secondary iteration of an IP development process that Danny’s been going through for many many years in. This is around advanced algorithms for the flow of traffic from point A to point B, different ways of managing what’s known as the consumer premises equipment, the CPE, the thing that’s in your office and your home that connects you to the internet, basically. There’s a whole series of technologies and cloud-based technologies around that that have been very interesting to us in terms of MidGARD and the direction we’re going.
Q2: So, why is the acquisition important for Falanx?
A2: Well, it’s important for two reasons really. First of all, the actual intellectual property within Cloudified, and a former company that Cloudified bought out called Xrio, is currently being bolted into our current MidGARD product. So, it is already adding direct value to the actual development life cycle, to the technology process that we’re developing and the stack is improving as a result, that’s one reason.
The second reason is that Danny himself came as part of the deal, much like I did with the ASC deal, and Danny is a very very good guy, he’s one of the best rapid prototypers I have ever met in my entire life and I’ve known him a good 15 years now. If you’ve got a concept and you need it to be reality quickly Danny can take it there and that’s been really useful. So, Danny has been working with us for a little while now, just as a contractor really, and part of this deal was to bring in all the intellectual property and himself into a positioning for the company where we can push forward at great speed now with the MidGARD advancement.
Q3: I was going to ask about Danny, who is the founder and the MD there, what else does Danny bring to the table?
A3: Danny is a good guy, he’s from Leeds but we won’t hold that against him! He’s a good guy, former professional rugby player so a very well-disciplined individual, he is, as I say, a rapid prototyper, he is the type of guy that can do concept-to-reality and do it quickly, not in a monolithic, slow development, traditional architecture but in the very latest Devoxx sort of agile rapid prototyping, rapid development. The sort of thing, that as a small company, we need more than anything which is the ability to be agile, the ability to develop quickly, go to market quickly and get there with the right product that works.
So, that’s really what Danny’s bringing to the table, years and years of experience, intellectual property and capability to actually take us there. So, it really has bolstered Falanx Group’s technology function, Danny works with me in the cyber side of the business and we’re all working together to take MidGARD to the next generation, taking it right through for a big public launch around September/October this year in terms of taking it properly into the market, the work he has done so far has been astounding.
