->Ottawa Business Journal
September 29, 2003
Brief
=====
The "Bill Gates of New Zealand" is eyeing Ottawa as one several possible locations for a Canadian head office.
In an interview last week, Sir Gil Simpson, founder and president of New Zealand-based Jade Software Corp., told the Ottawa Business Journal th
Details
=======
The "Bill Gates of New Zealand" is eyeing Ottawa as one several possible locations for a Canadian head office.
In an interview last week, Sir Gil Simpson, founder and president of New Zealand-based Jade Software Corp., told the Ottawa Business Journal the nation's capital and surrounding region would be an ideal place to establish a Canadian head office, make lasting links with Canadian firms and forge stronger ties with federal government officials.
"Part of our visit (to Canada) is to really understand where an office should be," Simpson said from the Parliamentary Restaurant, where he met with officials from the New Zealand High Commission to Canada.
Setting up a Canadian office in the Ottawa area would mean easy access to Jade's Atlanta-based office, since there are non-stop flights that run between the two cities, he said. As well, Quebec is "right across the river". Such a multicultural environment that "embraces diversity" also encourages the creativity necessary to generate innovative software solutions, he said.
"What more could you want?" he said.
Jade seems serious about establishing closer ties with Canada and already has a Canadian on the ground. Blake Carruthers, strategic business director for Jade, has been based in Ottawa for six months after moving from the company's U.K. office.
Carruthers said the company wishes to facilitate relationships "between such people as the high commissioner and the government folks here". Jade also wants to look at systems integrators to "find the best fit" and to "look at how our technology might be a good fit with government departments and organizations".
Currently, a number of federal government departments use LINC, a mainframe software development tool developed by Simpson some years ago. LINC is widely considered one of New Zealand's most successful software exports.
More recently, Jade has developed JADE, a platform built for the development and deployment of large transaction processing software systems. JADE is capable of modernizing business processes currently done under Unisys LINC, explained Carruthers.
Jade's Atlanta office is focused on helping North American organizations "struggling to move off Unisys LINC and mainframe technology, to transition their systems to JADE", which requires a LINC-to-JADE conversion service called JADE Enabling Transition. Pending the establishment of a Canadian head office, Jade's United States contingent would consult with Canadian counterparts to undertake the same process here.
One possible scenario would be to have an organization in Ottawa use JADE and then export a solution back to the New Zealand marketplace that is built from JADE, said Simpson.
"We build the enabling environment and we need to find places where (JADE) can be effective," he said. "So our interest in Canada is about the ability (here) to generate software. And we have the tools that help programmers create software. We make the marker pens and we need people to use our marker pens to do the drawings."
Simpson added, "The reason for us being here is that there are very few places in the world that actually generate software."
"I think there are a lot of confident and professional people in Canada in the IT system. We want to get JADE into the hands of those people. We don't expect them to rush in and grab it and think it's fantastic. But once they try it, we think they will find it exciting."
Graham Kelly, high commissioner for the New Zealand High Commission to Canada, added the IT trade relationship between New Zealand and Canada is "relatively small", but "the possibilities for growth are enormous".
September 29, 2003
Brief
=====
The "Bill Gates of New Zealand" is eyeing Ottawa as one several possible locations for a Canadian head office.
In an interview last week, Sir Gil Simpson, founder and president of New Zealand-based Jade Software Corp., told the Ottawa Business Journal th
Details
=======
The "Bill Gates of New Zealand" is eyeing Ottawa as one several possible locations for a Canadian head office.
In an interview last week, Sir Gil Simpson, founder and president of New Zealand-based Jade Software Corp., told the Ottawa Business Journal the nation's capital and surrounding region would be an ideal place to establish a Canadian head office, make lasting links with Canadian firms and forge stronger ties with federal government officials.
"Part of our visit (to Canada) is to really understand where an office should be," Simpson said from the Parliamentary Restaurant, where he met with officials from the New Zealand High Commission to Canada.
Setting up a Canadian office in the Ottawa area would mean easy access to Jade's Atlanta-based office, since there are non-stop flights that run between the two cities, he said. As well, Quebec is "right across the river". Such a multicultural environment that "embraces diversity" also encourages the creativity necessary to generate innovative software solutions, he said.
"What more could you want?" he said.
Jade seems serious about establishing closer ties with Canada and already has a Canadian on the ground. Blake Carruthers, strategic business director for Jade, has been based in Ottawa for six months after moving from the company's U.K. office.
Carruthers said the company wishes to facilitate relationships "between such people as the high commissioner and the government folks here". Jade also wants to look at systems integrators to "find the best fit" and to "look at how our technology might be a good fit with government departments and organizations".
Currently, a number of federal government departments use LINC, a mainframe software development tool developed by Simpson some years ago. LINC is widely considered one of New Zealand's most successful software exports.
More recently, Jade has developed JADE, a platform built for the development and deployment of large transaction processing software systems. JADE is capable of modernizing business processes currently done under Unisys LINC, explained Carruthers.
Jade's Atlanta office is focused on helping North American organizations "struggling to move off Unisys LINC and mainframe technology, to transition their systems to JADE", which requires a LINC-to-JADE conversion service called JADE Enabling Transition. Pending the establishment of a Canadian head office, Jade's United States contingent would consult with Canadian counterparts to undertake the same process here.
One possible scenario would be to have an organization in Ottawa use JADE and then export a solution back to the New Zealand marketplace that is built from JADE, said Simpson.
"We build the enabling environment and we need to find places where (JADE) can be effective," he said. "So our interest in Canada is about the ability (here) to generate software. And we have the tools that help programmers create software. We make the marker pens and we need people to use our marker pens to do the drawings."
Simpson added, "The reason for us being here is that there are very few places in the world that actually generate software."
"I think there are a lot of confident and professional people in Canada in the IT system. We want to get JADE into the hands of those people. We don't expect them to rush in and grab it and think it's fantastic. But once they try it, we think they will find it exciting."
Graham Kelly, high commissioner for the New Zealand High Commission to Canada, added the IT trade relationship between New Zealand and Canada is "relatively small", but "the possibilities for growth are enormous".
