FOR a UK information technology (IT) firm which turns over more than £70 million and has an office in New York, it seems something of an oddity that the company had no presence in Scotland until now.

When asked why, after two decades in business, the company had only now opened an office north of the Border, BJSS director James Whitehouse said simply that the opportunity had never come up.

In winning a major contract with Scottish Government vetting agency Disclosure Scotland, that opportunity did present itself, and BJSS wasted no time in setting up shop in Glasgow. The plan is to have 70 staff in place by roughly the end of next year.

Tellingly Mr Whitehouse said one of the major challenges the business would have in hitting that target was the intense competition out there for the services of Scotland’s many skilled IT workers.

Currently acting as interim head of the Glasgow office, Mr Whitehouse said BJSS was embracing Scotland’s entrepreneurial culture, noting how bodies like CodeBase, ScotlandIS and The Data Lab support businesses and workers.

“Scotland feels different to other parts of the UK,” he said.

In making this observation Mr Whitehouse has hit upon the benefits of Scotland’s collaborative approach to business growth, and much of the plaudits for that should go to Scotland’s eight Government-based Innovation Centres (of which The Data Lab is one). Scotland’s reputation in the tech industries is already enviable, and only set to grow as firms like BJSS expand here.