“Quicklook” Assessment of Greater Adelaide's Assets & Challenges ...

John Chapman did the presentation. This business is concerned with spectrum
consulting, software, Media Developers CDROM, Flash and DVD. Within Ecommerce
and Internet utilizing JAVA and XML, the business is the second fastest growing in SA.
It is Governmental endorsed, and does world wide training for Konica. They do forty
percent of work on site, the majority of the other work is from Sydney. Must go out on
plane to meet people in order to get business. They have to work harder to be based
Adelaide as fifty percent of business is on the eastern coast. The business has had low
barriers to entry, customers are naïve and they try to show them products in simple
terms. The opportunities are being a dot.com where need to tap into people that can
bring products to market. Also, they need think in terms of distribution for joint ventures
with other companies outside of SA.
RECALLDESIGN
Frank Falco, CEO led the discussion. This company is a services software services and
graphics with Flash capability. It grew five-hundred percent last year and produces
twenty percent of its revenue from SA, the rest comes from Singapore and the USA.
They train businesses to develop their e-comerce and business applications. The
consulting arm experiences different industries and problem sets. The product
development arm reengineers tools and libraries into completed applications.
Consulting business is the feeder for the product development that handles the entire
process. The SA Government has had a positive impact with training, and investment.
Recall hired local graduates, but the law does not allow for student to be directed. This
company did receive the benefit of sponsoring a student though from research that was
done by this student. Cash is a problem now. One thing that slowed the company down
was difficulty of finding the type of people needed with skill sets required. The last six
months has loosened up a bit. Management and business skills from University are
previously unused assets that are now being utilized. MYB was stated to be one of bestrun
companies in the technology sectors and Frank is the chairman of his board.. There
are plans for on spinning off smaller companies. It was noted that it is easy to locate the
IP that goes into these companies, but there may be issues with tax implications
ROCKSOFT LTD (www.rocksoft.com)
Ross Williams presented and Verasity is the software. This company is involved in
network based integrity assessment. SWIFT is the most significant customer; sent two
years evaluating – most customers in USA with little trade Australia. Strictwire is the
competitor. Would like to sell be in partnership with EDS to get computer security into
multinational companies and government, but they is having trouble getting in the door.
They feel they were spurned from the DSTO. Their overall target is the blue chip
companies. Obstacles to obtaining capital include: no track record revenue, Australian
investors are very risk adverse, American investors say the numbers are not on paper,
and a major barrier is a lack of time for research and documentation to obtain the
funding
PROPHECY INTERNATIONAL
The company is a rapid application assembly tools area that has been in business quite
a while. It is doing medium to large-scale work. It utilizes e-Foundation as the
Enterprise Data, Framework to Business Apps to Web deployment and is focusing on
the US market. There are over one hundred people in the company.
Obstacles were taken into account. One of the biggest is brand awareness as they are
small player in a big market. The challenge is to get put on lists for evaluation. They are
COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE
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