WANdisco stands for Wide Area Network Distributed Computing, and we make software happen.

This is because our technology is the secret ingredient behind the products that you use every day – from mobile phones to machinery. We are an active member of the community that develops the world’s most popular Source Code product: Subversion, and our technology is used by half of the world’s software developers.

Our customers include a host of Fortune 1000 companies such as Hewlett Packard, Intel, John Deere, European Southern Observatory, Barclays Capital, Walmart, GE and Cisco.

How it works

With our patented technology, software developers in distributed locations can work simultaneously, creating a seamless global network. Users at every site where WANdisco is installed have local access to the same data at all times, which means that they can make changes locally and see each other’s changes immediately.

We are proud to have a 98% customer renewal rate – which is driven by compelling ROI data: a recent study from Forrester Research has shown that our Subversion MultiSite offers a 167% return on investment with a nine-month payback period.

The company

Co-founded in 2005 by David Richards, Jim Campigli and Dr Yeturu Aahlad, WANdisco has dual headquarters in Silicon Valley and Sheffield, England. WANdisco grew, without raising any private equity, venture capital or angel finance to become a leading provider of global collaboration software to the software development industry.

On June 1st, 2012 the company had a highly successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange raising over $24 million. The IPO was oversubscribed by over 300% and the list of investors included Fidelity, Legal & General, Blackrock, Artemis, Hargreave Hale, Cazenove, M&G, Octopus and Standard Life. WANdisco's ticker is WAND.L


http://www.wandisco.com/

Another very good pick DC well done.

Thanks jimmy b .

From the write up below - and big data – something Richards is expecting to take off - thanks in no small part to an acquisition WANDisco made late last year.





By Gabriella Griffith Monday, 25 November 2013






Is this the world's bravest technology company?

At a time when even UK companies are snubbing London's stock exchanges for the likes of NASDAQ and NYSE, why did Silicon Valley-based WANdisco list on AIM?



‘I don’t get it,’ says David Richards, chief executive of software firm WANdisco. We’re sitting in the Halkin Hotel in Belgravia and I’ve just asked him why his company, based in Silicon Valley, decided to list in the UK; when even homegrown startups, such as games maker King, are eschewing LSE and AIM for the US stock exchanges.

‘I’m convinced they do it because of perceived cachet and because they feel they need to. But if you look at our investor list it’s almost the same as any investor list you would find on any decent exchange like NYSE or NASDAQ. Just because you’re listed in London doesn’t preclude US investors from buying your stock.’

‘In fairness, in the UK we do have a dearth of cutting edge tech companies, so it might be because they want to be near their peers - but I hope other companies consider London because if it’s just an argument about valuations it’s nonsense.’

Richards’ defence of the UK stock markets is a rare one, other entrepreneurs aren’t so quick to put their faith in the LSE and AIM – Dan Wagner told MT a few months ago there is no way he could see himself floating in London. But Richards has another reason for being listed on a UK exchange.

‘I like it because we do have that unique factor – we’re one of the very few high growth tech companies listed in London so it gives us a scarcity value too.’

WANdisco’s story certainly crosses borders. It was formed over in California, San Ramon to be exact, in 2005, when two would-be venture capitalists were introduced to computer scientist, Dr Yeturu Aahlad. David Richards, one of the two investors in question, is an English expat hailing from Sheffield. With development teams in the US and both Belfast and Sheffield, its technology is used to avoid outages and counts the likes of HP and IBM as clients. Having grown without any investment up until its 2012 IPO, the company raised £15m when it floated (with a market cap of £37m) and just last month, raised a further £19m from investors.

‘WANDisco’s beginning was one of those classic Silicon Valley stories, I met Dr Aahlad at a drinks party – his wife shuffled him over in my direction – he was the kind of super geek who would walk through a glass window to get away,’ says Richards.

‘He is a genius, he solved a complicated mathematical problem about how to replicate data over a wide area network [a clue to the company’s puzzling name there]. Computer scientists said it was impossible but he spent five years solving it.’

Up until that point, Richards and his old business partner James Campigli were considering setting up a venture capital fund, ‘that would invest in the uninvestable.’ The complexity of Dr Aahlad’s discovery made traditional investment too difficult - however Richards and Campigli decided not to invest in the technology, but to turn it into a business.

‘We would have been horrible investors because we’re way too operational – so we started the company.’

WANDisco’s technology enables the replication of data in real time, according to Richards, this has two implications – it makes collaboration across multiple locations a lot quicker and it also means if a server goes down somewhere, you still have the current data in numerous other places – known as continuous availability.

‘We completely eliminate outages,’ beams Richards. ‘For example I was talking to a bank the other day and if its trading system goes down, there is a cost of $100m per minute – we can stop that.’

There’s certainly no shortage of companies that have been hit with the odd outage – just look as NASDAQ’s unfortunate series of them; which depending on who you talk to, may have lost it Twitter’s IPO.

WANDisco [standing for wide area network distributed computing] applies this technology to two markets, the software development market (HP is its largest client with 50,000 users throughout the company) and big data – something Richards is expecting to take off - thanks in no small part to an acquisition WANDisco made late last year.

‘We paid $5m for a company called AltoStor, whose founders were part of the team that invented something called Hadoop while they were at Yahoo. Hadoop is the open source platform for big data – it is the underlying data base for things like Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on,’ explains Richards.

‘There are only four or five companies out there who can develop Hadoop and we’re now one of them. We want to be the defacto ‘continuous availability’ layer for Hadoop.’

Essentially, WANDisco aims to be the company all Hadoop users go to for ‘continuous availability.’ It’s a pretty big call – more than half of the Fortune 500 use Hadoop – and as big data gets well, bigger, that is surely set to rise. Whether you’re interested in big data or not, Richards’ plans for WANDisco and its technology are impressive.

WANDisco’s crucial acquisition of AltoStor would not have been possible without raising money. Until June 2012, WANDisco hadn’t taken investment – Richards and his team decided to go it alone, preferring to use the ‘strong intellectual property’ to grow organically.

‘It’s a marvellous discipline – before venture capital you had to build products that customers were prepared to buy – we went down that route meaning we had to stay on, or as close to, the product adoption curve as possible’

‘We’ve minted a whole bunch of millionaires in Sheffield. Without Sheffield, as an unfunded startup, this company wouldn’t have happened – and I’m not just saying that for the benefit of the UK.’

Richards may have grown up in the Sheffield but he insists it was never his intention to set up a development centre in the Steel City.

‘I’d love to say it was all planned that way but it was an accident,’ says Richards. ‘We were over in London looking to set up a sales office and I was appalled by the cost of lawyers and accountants.

‘I went to see an accountant in Sheffield, a friend of the family, and he mentioned his brother was a local computer programmer and a light bulb went off in my head. I started out with a small development team of five and now we have 70 based there.’

It’s an interesting combination - born and based in Silicon Valley, with development centres in Sheffield and Belfast, it stands out for more reasons than one. Scarcity value or not, there’s no denying its ability to drum up appetite from investors when it needs to. Last month it raised a further £19m, much faster than it anticipated, ‘we raised the cash in less than an hour, closing the book as soon as we opened it.’

WANDisco plans to use the money to expand its big data business – starting by hiring more engineers in California.

‘There’s a lot of work still to do. We’re still not close to achieving what we set out to achieve - to become one of the biggest software companies in the world,’ he says with a smile.

Which might mean Richards gets to spend less time back in his native Blighty. But what does the entrepreneur miss most about living in the UK?

‘Pubs,’ comes the answer, without hesitation. ‘That’s the cultural thing I miss most, especially on the west coast of the US. I’m a northerner, of course I love pubs.’

Well, from what he’s told us, there’s certainly a few people in Sheffield who will be more than happy to buy him a pint.

Whats Davy boy got to say about this then D/C? http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/25178715

Oh dear Stan. Lol. Cannot think its costing much to sponsor them then. :-))

Stan, is Fulham's manager any good. :-))

Buying at £15.10 :-))

WANdisco PLC (WAND:LSE) set a new 52-week high during today's trading session when it reached 1,530. Over this period, the share price is up 236.26%.

"Stan, is Fulham's manager any good. :-))"

Well put it this way D/C, I don't think Fulham think so right now -):

That's why I put a :-)) lol. That's two managers signing on today. Any cheap managers about. lol

Yes, and the one you definitely don't want is Coyle.

Or this bloke Sean Dyche. real rubbish. :-))

WANdisco Enhances Global Collaboration and Productivity for Leading Digital Solutions and Services Provider Altech MultiMedia

San Ramon, CA – December 3, 2013




http://www.wandisco.com/news/press-releases/wandisco-enhances-global-collaboration-and-productivity-for-leading-digital-solu

You have done exceptionally well with these dc - what will you do about capital gains if you go to sell them? Hope they are tied up somehow so you can avoid that. I have never had such luck to worry about that one. I don't expect an answer as that is personal. Well done.

Hope you are keeping well 3m. Answer to your question - pay it. Pulled out my initial investment and some. The rest will be held as long as news is positive and the sp stays so.

#sneakpeek @WANdisco's new ad in the @swfc programme featuring Miguel Llera

WANdisco ‏@WANdisco 4 Dec
@WANdisco thanks partner @SHI_Intl for a great welcome and event!

i am moderately tempted by this one, not least because QL, which is quite good on its picks, gave a very positive review

however, it really is horribly illiquid, huge spread (40/50p) and controlled by the MMs although there are 6 of them

Yes, me to, But big spreads put me off as well... Anyway, what did you bring me back then from your travels, And don't give me that old pony about (left my duty frees at the Airport) stuff -):

lol

cynic, Stan

We need people like you to find and use the 'positive aspects' of big spreads for utterly fantastic stock such as this.

:-)

IMHO, big spreads usually exist when a market for the stock is not very actively traded and it has a low volume of contracts traded. Thus it doesn't take much action to get the sp moving. As the fundies and prospects are quite good for WAND, this is what has whanged the sp skywards.

I suppose the secret with a stock like this, is not to get too greedy and to try to selectively take targeted profits.

I would regard this as being the type of stock you can buy and sit on and don't have to get too bothered about watching it all the time.