Newsletter Cleantech …...1st Quarter 2013 Rua Alexandre Herculano, 38 • 1269-161 Lisboa -...

1st Quarter 2013

Rua Alexandre Herculano, 38 • 1269-161 Lisboa - Portugal • Phone: +351 21 310 64 90 / Fax: +351 21 310 64 25 • E-mail: [email protected]

www.es-ventures.com

NewsletterCleantech Healthcare IT

Editorial

Joaquim Sérvulo RodriguesCEOEspírito Santo Ventures

it. The reasons for that are several fold. I will

mention a few of the more relevant.

First, society at large does not value

entrepreneurs as highly as they are valued

in other regions. The role models, the heroes

presented to young ambitious people rarely

include successful entrepreneurs, and hence

the proportion of very bright people that

decide to start their own business is lower in

Europe than it is in the US, for instance. Many

European countries are trying hard to change

that, but it’s a slow cultural change.

Second, large European companies are

less accustomed to buy young innovative

companies to maintain their competitive

edge, than large US companies are. These

movements represent a way out for both

entrepreneurs and investors, and a key

component of the economic value creation

machine (those amounts are usually

reinvested in other innovative companies,

which create jobs and wealth).

Europe is facing a significant growth problem.

In spite of all the grandiose declarations

by politicians on the intent to transform

Europe into the most dynamic continent

to do business in, what we observe is the

proliferation of regulations and the increase

of other context specific costs that impact

the competitiveness of European companies,

as well as a difficulty in extracting economic

benefits from the significant investment in

R&D that is made in Europe.

The first part of these problems, the ones

related with the size and complexity of the

public sectors, will hopefully be addressed as

a consequence of the current economic crisis.

Let me concentrate here on the second

part: extracting economic benefit from R&D

investment.

It’s important to understand that R&D

investment has been increasing worldwide

at an accelerated pace. The global amount

of R&D spending has grown at 7% per year

during the past 10 years and at 8% during the

past 5 years.

Most of that spending is done by the private

sector. Businesses understand that they need

to innovate in order to remain competitive in

an increasingly competitive global economy.

The share of public spending on R&D (when

compared with private investment) is bigger

in Europe than in other developed regions.

The question is: has Europe been able to

extract economic value from this investment?

There are signs that suggest that Europe is

lagging behind other regions in profiting from Continued on page 8

02 Espírito Santo Ventures - Newsletter - 1st Quarter 2013

1st Quarter 2013 - Newsletter - Espírito Santo Ventures 03

OutSystems is a Espírito Santo Ventures II portfolio company, author of the Agile Platform, a software development tool that has been reshaping

the way information systems are developed and deployed, to meet the fast changing requirements of today’s business environment.

We invited Paulo Rosado, OutSystems’

CEO, to talk with us about the company

he is leading.

Espírito Santo Ventures - Paulo, do you

want to share with us your knowledge of the

difficulties that corporations face in managing

their information systems?

Paulo Rosado - The pressure to deliver new,

innovative business applications has never

been greater for an IT organization.

Challenges ranging from increasing sales, improving customer satisfaction, decreasing costs of operations, meeting regulatory requirements and innovating businesses put a tremendous pressure on IT to deliver applications fast.

Often, these same applications need to be

changed again – faster – in order to match

evolving business needs. However this is not

the case today. In general what we find is that

IT is slow to react to the needs of the business;

Systems are not flexible enough to evolve

with the business, and the cost of changing

and maintaining applications is too high and

increases year after year.

While the business is evolving faster, IT is being

left behind. According to Gartner Group, from

2011 to 2015, application backlog, i.e. demand

for functionality that is not delivered, will grow

between 10% and 20% CAGR, doubling in 5

years. Application evolution and maintenance

represents at least 30% of the IT budget of

every mid to large organization. The problem is

endemic to all industries and geographies.

Paulo RosadoCEO of OutSystems


ESV - How does OutSystems address this

problem?

PR - The OutSystems Agile Platform addresses it with a development, change management and operations platform that reduces the cost of changing software by at least one order of magnitude.

The Agile Platform is perfect for those who

want to use Agile methodologies for their

projects. Companies that try to implement an

Agile methodology struggle with the stream

of changes that are included in their projects,

usually driving the project out of budget and

schedule. Traditional development technologies

just don’t allow them to react to such degree

of change. By having the technology that

addresses and overcomes the inefficiencies in

software change, our customers not only build

applications faster, but have a way to react

immediately to surprises and business change,

even during initial development projects.

The platform combines a model-driven

development environment, a patented change

impact analysis technology, easy integration

with existing enterprise systems and complete

possible by ensuring that the software we

sell provides long term and increasing value

throughout the years. OutSystems is heavily

focused on helping its customers transform the

way they build and maintain their applications

- not only in getting a first application running.

The software that we license allows greater

simplification of these processes, which

reduces most of the costs involved in the

maintenance of software. Our professional

services are a complement to this goal. We

want our customers to get to be autonomous

and achieve “IT nirvana” as fast as possible.

ESV - What has been the market acceptance

to OutSystems technology?

PR - OutSystems has a mature presence in

territories such as Portugal, the Benelux and

the United States – where we have offices

on the East and West Coasts - and we have

support for staging and deployment of

applications, as well as integrated operations

support.

Our customers build enterprise grade applications three to four times faster and with two to four times less people, and can make substantial changes to a mission critical application and move it to production with no bugs in hours instead of weeks.

ESV - OutSystems licenses its platform, but

also provides development services. How do

you manage this balance?

PR - We were very successful in making the

shift from a perpetual licensing model to

subscription based licensing. That was only

The Agile Platform architecture and frontend interface


started successful operations in South Africa,

Brazil and the UK.

Overall, OutSystems’ business grew 40% in 2012, reaching customers in 22 industries

such as banking, telecom, insurance,

healthcare, consumer goods, manufacturing,

utilities, and government. The acceptance

has been amazing worldwide. This is indeed

an endemic problem to whole industries and

geographies. We have acquired sizable global

500 accounts which include Gaz De France,

the US Army and Liberty International just

to name a few and many more we can’t talk

about (smile).

ESV - Is there any particular project or

implementation that you would like to

share with us to illustrate the benefits that

your clients can extract from OutSystems

technology?

PR - One of the great perks of this job is

witnessing the amazing creativity that such

different businesses have when given a

technology that gives them speed, flexibility

and reliability. Let me give you two examples.

Charles River is a typical great example of the

impact OutSystems has on an organization.

Charles River is a US based global provider of

essential research products and services that

advance drug discovery and development.

In 2012 Charles River built a solution, Internet

Colony Management (ICM), to automate the

management of specialized research models

(primarily rodents) and colonies for biomedical

research. The system went through more

than a hundred software versions as the team

tested and tried a lot of innovative ideas.

ICM disrupted the competitive balance of the

industry and is positioned now as a major

competitive differentiator. Charles River keeps

on changing the application, adding new

features and further separating itself from

competitors.

Without the Agile Platform these change

dynamics would not have been possible. After

ICM, Charles River adopted

the Agile Platform as the core technology to implement all differentiating enterprise applications with the goal of making IT the core engine of innovation.

Another typical example was of TAP, an airline

that created an application to improve fuel

savings by calculating the exact plane weight

using last minute information from checked in

passengers, luggage and some other sources.

One of the business stakeholders commented

on the change the Platform brought to how

this application was developed that “the Agile

Platform enabled the first (application) demo

to be delivered very early in the project life-

cycle, leading to broad key user involvement

in the development process. This iterative

approach helped build widespread confidence

that the solution fully addressed our business

needs”.

ESV - What is your vision for OutSystems, in a

three to five year period?

PR - The problem we are addressing is so wide

and fundamental that the only issue we have

is being able to create enough structure to

sustain our growth. And we plan to stay ahead

of the curve in what concerns our competitors.

We are currently developing new disruptive

capabilities that will be released during the

next 3 years and that will further extend our

competitive differentiator.

Our objective for the next 5 years is to scale

operations and have a very large territory

footprint by the end of this period. The US is

leading in the amount invested and will be our

largest revenue contributor.

Agile Platform application examples

Working at OutSystems


News from Espírito Santo Ventures

The Espírito Santo Ventures III and

ISTART-I fund invested in Muzzley, a

young Portuguese company that developed

a technology which uses mobile devices as

dedicated remote controls of smart TVs, set top

boxes, and multiplayer games, introducing a

new dimension in the interaction with systems

and appliances. Until today, players were limited

to the available devices supplied by the game

console or smart TV manufacturer which,

due to its fixed configuration seriously limited

the user experience and prevented multi-user

games to be played in smart TV.

Muzzley has signed a contract with a major

cable TV operator for a multi-user game to

be played by the whole family on their TV set,

using the Muzzley mobile phone application,

and concluded a proof-of-concept for a smart

TV manufacturer, allowing players in different

houses to interact through their smart TVs.

In the last quarter of 2012, Espírito Santo Ventures’ funds invested in SakProject, Muzzley and Weduc, three Portuguese companies, unique in their business model or technology.

ISTART-I fund invested in SAKproject

International, SA, a start-up based out

of Viseu that has developed a breakthrough

technology in the field of sport protection,

namely customized shinpads for football

players. Currently existing shinpads, worn by

both professional and amateur players, are

far from offering an adequate level of impact

protection (every season many players get

injured, quite often seriously injured) and an

adequate level of comfort (for example many

players choose not to wear shinpads in day

to day training sessions, where actually many

injuries occur).

SAKProject has developed a product that

allows for much better absorption to impact

(stronger resistance) and much better levels of

comfort (lighter, contour adjusted), using similar

material to that of cutting-edge bullet proof

protection and based on a 100% customized

process, so that shinpads reflect the legs’ shape

with extreme accuracy. A unique 3-D scanning

solution is under development.


Recent News

Oceanlinx

(December, 12)

GreenWAVE, Oceanlinx’s single oscillating

water column that has been designed

specifically for shallow water application,

was the winner of the Australian Innovation

Challenge in the Energy and Minerals category.

The Australian Innovation Challenge is held

in association with Shell and supported by

the Federal Department of Industry, Science,

Research and Tertiary Education. The award

aims to support the most promising ideas in

Australia into commercialisation. There were

“Espírito Santo Inovação e

Internacionalização” fund invested in

Weduc, SA, a company based out of Oporto.

There is a large discussion about a “Facebook

for Education” solution, but no player has

yet developed an inclusive network (not just

school-centric, but for all educational players),

that replicates real world connections and

real world people in a single platform. It is

assumed that such a solution is probably

inevitable in the short-mid term, the question

is rather “when?”. Weduc’s over-three-years-

experienced solution is likely to be a winner as

soon as traction ramps up, as the company

has developed a comprehensive, 360º degree

platform that links, in a safe, private and

media-supportive (photos, etc.) way, all

constituencies that make part of each child’s

education community throughout his or her

upbringing.

Weduc has adopted a new freemium

business model that generated a significant

increase in the number of registered users

(rapidly attaining the 20.000 flat it has today),

so there are solid signs that the current

launch in Portugal will be successful, prior to

expanding to new geographies.

hundreds of entries in the Energy and Minerals

category that went through an intensive

judging process. Ideas were evaluated on their

scientific and technological excellence, novelty,

potential benefit and impact, sustainability

and lack of negative environmental impact and

potential for commercialisation, with Oceanlinx

coming out on top.

OutSystems

(December,11)

OutSystems, provider of the industry-leading

application development tool “Agile Platform”,

announced a partnership with immixGroup

to help meet booming government demand

for custom application development. Since

1997, immixGroup has helped hundreds

of companies expand their public sector

footprints while providing government agencies

with reliable access to technology products

and services. By partnering with immixGroup,

OutSystems can easily provide government

agencies with more efficient and powerful

application development solutions.

These projects are funded by the National Strategic Reference Framework (QREN) and the EU.


2012 over 2011. SafetyPay currently operates

in twelve countries, with merchants in many

more countries around the world accepting

payment through their safe online-banking

payment solution service.

Spectrum Bridge

(February, 21)

MELD Technology and Spectrum Bridge

announced the availability of the MT300

Personal BroadcastTM station. MELD’s

patented TV transmission technology enables

the use of TV White Space spectrum for

sending HD video and control signals over-

the-air using unlicensed spectrum. The MELD

transmitter uses a standard TV signal to

efficiently transmit multiple HD video streams

and control many TV’s wirelessly – at a

dramatically reduced cost, compared to other

media distribution technologies. These benefits

make the solution ideal for intelligent signage

FeedZai

(January, 2)

FeedZai, a Portuguese company leader in

next generation fraud prevention software

that protects electronic transactions, closed

a series A-1 round of €1,9M, to support its

international expansion. Lead by Espírito Santo

Ventures, this round brings on board two new

investors, SAP Hanna and Data Colective

Venture Capital.

SafetyPay

(January, 17)

SafetyPay, a secure payment provider for

online shoppers, merchants and banks

worldwide, announced record growth in

transactions processed, as well as record

growth in the value of transactions processed.

Transactions for the year of 2012 increased

149% over 2011. Likewise, the dollar value of

transactions processed increased by 88.5% in

Europe is facing a significant growth problem.Continued from page 1

And third, the cost of failure in most

European countries (but not in all!) is very

high. A significant number of entrepreneurs,

even successful ones, do fail in some of the

companies they start. It is very important that

in the event of failure, without fraud (although

sometimes with debt), entrepreneurs are

quickly free to start over again. In a number

of European countries it may take more than

10 years until a manager of a company that

failed is considered “clean” by the judicial and

fiscal systems to be able to start over. This is a

significant disincentive for someone to take the

risk of starting a business.

A lot of good R&D is done in European labs,

which might have significant economic

potential, but we need to increase the

willingness of researchers to start new

businesses.

In this issue of our newsletter you will learn

more about OutSystems, creator of the Agile

Platform, a software development tool that

is reshaping the way information systems

are developed and maintained, and which is

being adopted by an increasing number of top

companies from all corners of the Earth.

Recent News

applications used in airports, hotels and

restaurants, convention centers, schools and

hospitals. If you can plug a TV into an electric

outlet, you have an instant content viewing

platform that is limited only by the number of

TVs you have in range of the MT300.

Ubiquity

(January, 10)

Ubiquity, a business process outsourcing

(BPO), today announced the signing of a

multi-year agreement to provide services to

Univision Enterprises, a division of Univision

Communications Inc., the leading media

company serving Hispanic America. This

deal will provide a full range of services for

Univision’s General Purpose Reloadable (GPR)

card program, further bolstering Ubiquity’s

financial services client portfolio.

Newsletter Cleantech …...1st Quarter 2013 Rua Alexandre Herculano, 38 • 1269-161 Lisboa -...

Documents

Transcript of Newsletter Cleantech …...1st Quarter 2013 Rua Alexandre Herculano, 38 • 1269-161 Lisboa -...