Tech23: SaaS/ In the cloud panel: Angusta, IPScape, MyCosm, Tagmotion

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A few quick notes about the four companies presenting on the SaaS/ In the Cloud panel at Tech23 (for background on the event see my post from this morning). A very impressive line-up.

Angusta Systems. Uses combinatorial algorithms to help banks manage their physical cash inventory – a solid niche apparently worth over $100 million in value to each of the big Australian banks.

IPScape. Full call center software available as a service, providing direct VoIP linkage to the cloud, enabling the implementation of a call center platform within days (or minutes). Price is calculated based on voice minutes, meaning cost can be allocated down to the individual call center agent. Partners with Salesforce and has a run rate of $2 million.

MyCosm. A photo-realistic 3D virtual world with real-world physics, which allows people to create their design individual worlds and monetize them through 3D content and other means. They see the 10 million users of 3D CAD software as a key potential market. I have been very impressed by the potential of MyCosm since I first saw it, and I’m still very keen to see this on the market. The panel seemed to be sceptical that there would be a real demand for this.

Tagmotion. I’ve known Andrew Simms for a long time and received an overview of an early version of Tagmotion many years ago. The core concept is video tagging, enabling time-based tagging of movies and other audio-visual material, including matching with scripts. It began with tagging the archives of the Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne. In response to a question by Alan Noble of Google about algorithmic approaches surpassing tagging, Andrew quoted Marissa Mayer saying that there is still 10 years in which human-based approaches to searching video will beat artificial intelligence, twice that for documents.

Questions from the panel about SaaS included an interesting one from Alan Noble of whether third-party web services are part of the stack, or it is all hosted by the company itself. On the one hand, Simon Burke of IPScape said he wanted to take complete accountability for service delivery, so they run it all themselves. Alan recommended watching scalability, as that’s one of the hardest parts of delivering a SaaS.