Superstructure goes for growth

TOM PULLAR-STRECKER

  22 March 2004

Wellington intelligence software firm Superstructure Development has stepped out of the shadows to pick up a $400,000 grant from Technology New Zealand and flag a possible $1-$2 million capital raising.

The 20-year-old firm, which has 17 staff based in the Hutt and annual revenues of about $2 million, has been one of the Kiwi software industry's better kept secrets.

This is not entirely surprising given that one of its target markets is helping government agencies adapt to the changed security environment created by the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

It is one of the few software firms to successfully make the switch from doing bespoke software development for clients to commercialising and exporting its own applications.

These are intelligence analysis application SiD and another database system, AQD, which is used by 35 airlines around the world including Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand to record and manage information about accidents and safety risks.

SOFTLY, SOFTLY: Wellington intelligence software firm Superstructure Development's Managing Director Lindsay Gault. The company has stepped out of the shadows to pick up a $400,000 grant from Technology New Zealand and flag a possible $1-$2 million capital raising.

Picture:
ROSS GIBLIN/Dominion Post

Other SiD customers include the New Zealand Defence Force, the Fisheries Ministry, Inland Revenue, Internal Affairs and some enforcement agencies responsible for fisheries and wildlife protection in Australia.

Managing director Lindsay Gault says SiD is based on a de facto security intelligence standard called Anacapa, which was developed 10 years ago in the US.

Anacapa sets out a common set of definitions that intelligence software such as SiD can use to classify "entities" and the relationships between them, as well as conventions on how these entities and relationships are graphically represented on computers.

"An `entity' could be anything; drugs, people, organisations, weapons," says Mr Gault.

Anacapa recognises that relationships between people and items of interest to enforcement agencies can change over time and that information may need to be viewed from a historical perspective – for example, to analyse what links an individual might have had with an outlawed organisation in the past.

While SiD and AQD are bringing in similar revenues at present, it is the scale of the market opportunity created by global security concerns and the market potential of SiD that have prompted Superstructure to switch its focus from organic growth to seeking a step change in its market presence.

Consultant Hamish Clark, who has been contracted to help advise the company on business development, says Superstructure aims to raise $1-$2 million by the end of the year by selling a minority stake to private equity or angel investors.

"Sadly, it's an investment which will probably come from offshore."

Superstructure Development is owned by three owner-directors, including Mr Gault, Susan Glyde and Bryan Ketley.

The company will use the Technology NZ grant to improve SiD's ability to securely share information with other applications using communications protocol XML and to translate the application into Cantonese for the Chinese market.

It also plans to integrate SiD with other software tools. These include Wellington-developed software utility The Mole, which can be used to quickly analyse the content of unstructured data trawled up by search engines, an Anacapa-compliant visualisation tool called i2, and fuzzy-logic software used to conduct multilingual searches on people's names.

Mr Gault says the company plans to appoint a US partner to sell and support SiD in the US, where he says homeland security concerns appear to have created "strong chaos" at the level of county policing.

"The US market is hard enough to penetrate without talking security.

"As a New Zealand company, you wouldn't get a foot in the door, even with the help of the NZ Defence Force."

Following a post-9/11 and Sars-induced lull, Mr Gault says Superstructure's AQD airline business is picking up, with five new customers, including British regional airline MK, signed up since January.

Though some airlines opt to build their own incident management software in-house, AQD's only commercial rival comes from British Airways, he says.

British Airways is deciding whether it wants to be in the software development business and hasn't recently been an active competitor, says Mr Gault.

About Upshot Technologies

Upshot Technologies develops and licenses enterprise intelligence automation technologies used in the discovery of information from unstructured data sources. Its product The Mole uses a powerful patented  content analysis technology to provide abstracts of information based on a user's area of interest. The Mole's unique ability to unlock the value within unstructured data and automate processes around this information differentiates it from its competitors.

You can find out more information about Upshot Technologies and The Mole by contacting us at www.themolesite.com or email .