THE co-founder of Glasgow-based Stream Technologies has declared the company’s acquisition by global software design giant Arm Holdings is a massive vote of confidence in the Scottish tech scene, while raising the prospect of further jobs being taken on in Scotland following the deal.
Nigel Chadwick, the former accountant who established Stream with Kevin McDowall 18 years ago, said the deal has created a “technology set that opens up the IoT (Internet of Things) connectivity field in a way that hasn’t been done to date”.
And, further to the sale of Edinburgh-based Skyscanner to China’s Ctrip in a £1.4 billion deal in 2016, Mr Chadwick said the acquisition shows that “Scottish tech is very much alive”.
In his first interview since the deal was announced, Mr Chadwick said: “There has been great technology coming out of Scotland for many, many years. It has got a history of inventions and discoveries.
“This is just another example that the Scottish tech is very much alive and there’s some real gems within the Scottish economy. We’re still capable of delivering high-value, high-growth, game-changing technology.”
Moreover, with Brexit looming, Mr Chadwick said it was “critical in the current political climate” that the industry was in such a healthy state. “It’s competing not just a European scale, but a global scale,” he observed. “This particular deal, and the marrying of the technology and the people and the scope it affords going forward, is all positive. It is a real, good positive story for Scotland’s tech sector and Glasgow’s economy.”
READ MORE: Glasgow tech firm snapped up by Arm
Stream Technologies is a pioneer of IoT technology. It has developed an advanced software platform which enables data to be communicated between everyday devices such as smart meters, cars and vending machines.
Arm said that Stream’s software was “highly complementary” to its IoT connectivity and device management offer, with the union coming a critical time in the development of the technology. Masayoshi Son, the founder of Arm’s Japanese owner SoftBank, has declared that his vision is to deliver one trillion chips for IoT devices by 2035.
Mr Chadwick said: “Arm is an incredible fit, both from the technology aspect and the people aspect. It really creates a technology set that opens up the IoT connectivity field in a way that hasn’t been done to date.
“It is really a key part in enabling that vision of a trillion connections by 2035 by Masayoshi Son, head of Softbank and obviously the owners of Arm.
“We’re creating this seamless connectivity play in the IoT world which is very, very much needed to accelerate the billions upon billions of connections that the analysts have been talking about for years now. It is [an] extremely exciting play."
READ MORE: From leisure to accountancy... and the Internet of Things
Mr Chadwick emphasised the importance of the cultural fit between both Stream and Arm. And he said the deal brings closer the vision he and Mr McDowall had for the technology when they set out.
“The most amazing thing is that myself and Kevin McDowall, my co-founder of Stream of 18 years ago, did have this vision,” he said. “It was almost before M2M (machine to machine) as a term was born, which preceded IoT. We did have this vision that there would be a time where we would see data transmitted from devices, things other than mobile phones.
“That was quite a prescient vision and very early days if you consider we were still in the early days of mobile phones and texting.”
The value of the Arm deal was not disclosed, nor was the number of people employed by Stream. However, Mr Chadwick said the headcount at Stream would rise. “We’ve got a great talent pool here which we will be adding to,” he said. “We are very much going to be building out in Glasgow .”
And the Stream founders will continue to play a key role in the business. “For us, it was an amazing closure of volume one of Stream’s history, but the most incredible opening of volume two,” Mr Chadwick said.
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