Legendary status
A maverick in the IT service management market, Cherwell Software is starting to challenge the proprietary software giants of ITSM according to industry pundits. VitAL editor Matt Bailey spoke to the company’s Europe managing director Tony Probert.
Knowing that the roots of Cherwell are in the United States, I was always a little intrigued as to why the company was named after a river that flows near Oxford in the UK and lends its name to a service station on the M40. I suspected there must be a town or area in the States that could account for the brand. In fact the company is named after the Oxfordshire river. “The name Cherwell comes from the River Cherwell, which flows through the central part of England and joins the River Thames in Oxford,” says the company. “Even though we are a US-based company, we are fond of the history surrounding this river. The graphic in our logo is symbolic of these two rivers merging together.”
It turns out that CEO Vance Brown and the co founders of Cherwell are fans of the English fantasy novel as purveyed by Cherwell locals J.R.R Tolkien and C.S Lewis. “As the story goes, J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to stroll along Addison’s Walk, a beautiful path alongside the Cherwell. And, it was during times like these that Tolkien developed the stories for The Lord of the Rings and Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia. We’re big fans of Tolkien and Lewis, and their classic stories that have survived the test of time – stories about men and women engaged in noble causes”.
“At Cherwell Software, we’re passionate about our own noble cause; listening to our customers and caring for their needs. We are building a company that we believe will ‘survive the test of time’ by providing quality products with extraordinary customer care. We take seriously our tag-line: Innovative Technology built on Yesterday’s Values.”
And the final connection between the software company and the rural Oxfordshire idyll? Cherwell District Council now uses Cherwell Software for its service desk needs.
“We are not looking to just build a company and sell it. We want to build great technology – in an industry we enjoy – while building lasting relationships with both our employees and customers,” says Vance Brown. “Accordingly, our private company has no outside debt and no venture capital funding. We want to do this for a living; for the long haul. We have no ‘exit strategy’.”
IT veterans
With more than 30 years in the IT industry, Cherwell’s European managing director, Tony Probert has spent more than 18 years helping to build, develop and manage start-up operations for software companies within the UK and EMEA region. He spent eight years as European managing director for GoldMine Software Corporation (now known as FrontRange Solutions), growing the European business from a two person start-up to more than 100 people, with revenues in excess of $15m.
He subsequently held a variety of senior management positions with responsibility for sales, channel management, marketing and international business development for a number of software companies. Having been involved with the help desk and service management industry within the UK and Europe since the late 1980s, Probert brings a wealth of knowledge, relationships and practical operational experience to Cherwell Software.
VitAL: What are the origins of the company; how did it start and develop; how has it grown and how is it structured?
Tony Probert: Cherwell Software has been formed by members of the original management team from a company called Bendata, which was a pioneer and leader in the help desk software industry, being the original developers of the HEAT product line. The company was founded in 2003, as a result of a meeting between our CEO, Vance Brown and Arlen Feldman our CTO, with a view to bring a new solution and business model to the service desk industry.
The company has grown consistently year on year and even in this very challenging financial climate has been profitable for ten quarters in a row. This is no mean accomplishment, when in recent times we have seen many of our competitors have to cut staffing numbers, lose focus on product development or seeking to be acquired. Cherwell has gaining significant recognition from leading industry analyst groups such as Forrester, IDC, Ovum and Gartner, with Forrester recently citing Cherwell as an ‘emerging leader of ITSM solutions’ able to compete with the ‘megavendors’ of BMC, CA, HP and IBM. We have also been finalists for recent industry awards, Pink Elephant ‘Innovation of the Year’ and Service Desk Institute ‘Supplier of the Year’, terrific recognition of the advances we have made.
Cherwell is a privately-owned and privately-funded company, with no outside influence from VC companies or corporate investors. It has corporate headquarters in Colorado Springs, USA and European offices in the UK. We also have partner companies operating in North America, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Holland and Italy.
We are founded on the genuine principles of friendship, high morals and building for the future.
VitAL: What is the company’s specialist area or product group, if any?
TP: The development and delivery of IT Service Management solutions, based around the industry best practice requirements of ITIL v3, with 11 management processes covered by PinkVERIFY certification. In addition, our solution has an underlying .net-based application development platform called CBAT (Codeless Business Application Technology), which also empowers our customers to easily develop other integrated business applications, such as Project Management, CRM, Facilities Management, Bug Tracking, Purchase Order and Student Record systems.
VitAL: Is that specialisation to make the best use of skills in the company or because it fits the company’s world view or has it simply evolved?
TP: The specialism is based on the vast help desk/service management industry experience of the individuals involved with Cherwell, which from a technical and commercial perspective equates to hundreds of man years of knowledge, experience and passion.
VitAL: How has any specialisation influenced the company’s general stance?
TP: Aside from the obvious, I would call it more a desire than a specialisation. The vision of the Cherwell founders is to create a solution that changes the face of this industry for the benefit of the customer, by delivering a feature-rich, open solution that is more scalable and flexible, simply priced, with significantly lower ongoing management overheads and choice of deployment, than that of the legacy companies people have been used to dealing with in recent years.
VitAL: Who are the company’s main customers today and in the future?
TP: Our customers are essentially any medium to enterprise organisation that has a requirement for a corporate service desk solution, whether it be for internal IT or external customer support. A key objective for us moving forward is to deliver our version of an ‘AppStore’, where those customers and partners that develop additional business applications using the CBAT platform can share them with our customer community to use.
VitAL: What is the company’s business model, ie, does it select a market and then design solutions to meet the needs of that market or does it specialise in particular solutions and seek markets where those solutions are needed?
TP: We have a specific market being service management but through the continued development of applications using our CBAT platform, we believe that solutions will be designed to both meet the changing needs of that market but will also see the development of solutions that will take us into new markets.
VitAL: What is the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, ie, ‘green’ issues?
TP: We are very aware of the need to protect the environment and as we build our business take appropriate measures to consider and protect the environment where possible. Given the beautiful location of our corporate headquarters, set at the foot of the Rocky Mountain range in Colorado, you cannot but be aware of the need for environmental protection.
VitAL: How does the company communicate with vendors and customers?
TP: We look to have an open dialogue with other vendors and are members of a raft of industry organisations that constantly bring us in to contact with vendor companies. As for our customers Cherwell uses a number of traditional methods, including user groups and an advisory board. We are also increasingly using new social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter etc, to communicate with and develop our customer community.
VitAL: What does the product range cover?
TP: An extensive and fully featured IT Service Management solution, asset discovery, web portal and mobile device technologies.
VitAL: What is your view of the current state of IT Service Management and IT in business and the economy in general, the challenges and the opportunities?
TP: Considering the current global economic climate IT Service Management seems to be relatively buoyant. I believe this is because as organisations have to review their support strategies and have the need to be more efficient and productive, with few resources, at a lower cost they are having to review their legacy solutions and find more effective systems. The challenge in the main is financial and organisations being able to justify the projects required. The opportunities are many; the replacement of legacy enterprise solutions that are costly to support, manage and maintain.
I think the current situation, the economic climate and the recent change of Government is a good opportunity for Cherwell in the European market. We are bringing technology to the market that is more open and organisations that have to deliver more at lower cost are looking at their tools. Are they able to deliver with their existing tools? The big legacy software solutions are inflexible, expensive and not very adaptive. Their users need to look at alternatives and this is opening the door to us. We offer enterprise capability in a way that wasn’t there before. We can offer the ability to modify and customise without reprogramming or changes to source code, it’s all done through wizards. The big legacy systems simply can’t do that and that is an opportunity for us.
The window never closes it just moves. You need the right product at the right time and it’s the legacy vendors who are at risk now. We provide a flexible technology that delivers more in a more cost effective way.
VitAL: Has the company grown organically or by acquisition and how much is growth expected in the future?
TP: As a privately-owned and funded company, Cherwell has and will grow organically, which will provide us with a much more stable and stronger financial base for the future, by having no debt or outside financial influences that could put negative and unwanted pressures on future business decisions.
VitAL: What are the future plans for the business?
TP: Continue business growth in our target markets and extend the capabilities of our solutions to more functional areas within customer organisations. However, it is our aim that this will never be achieved without retaining the very strong focus we have on delivering a quality solution backed by a world class customer service ethos.
VitAL: Tony Probert, thank you very much.
