SYSTEMATIC PRODUCTS ESTABLISHED AS C2 SYSTEM OF CHOICE
By Julian Nettlefold, Editor, BATTLESPACE
BATTLESPACE meets Systematic’s founder, Michael Holm President and CEO of Systematic at DSEI.
Many of the world’s leading suppliers of hardware were using Systematic SitaWare as the C2 solution of choice to best demonstrate their hardware’s capabilities at DSEi 2007. These included well known vendors such as Ultra, ITT, Blazepoint, ESRI, The British Army, DRS, General Dynamics, Patria and Lockheed Martin.[stm1]
As a leading supplier of COTS products for the defence industry, Systematic is beginning to reap the rewards of coming to market with an open architecture. The company’s software is appealing to more and more organizations within the industry as they seek to be able to establish a standards-based, commercially available core technology on which to build national specific infrastructures.
BATTLESPACE took the opportunity to meet the company’s founder, Michael Holm, President and CEO of Systematic, during DSEi to find out how a relatively small Danish company is making inroads on its major competitors.
Systematic
For those of you that don’t know, Systematic Software Engineering A/S is Denmark’s largest privately-owned software and systems Company. The company develops and implements complex Mission Critical IT solutions for information and communications systems, primarily for the defence and healthcare sectors as well as major manufacturing and service companies.
Systematic is the company behind IRIS, the military messaging system that has a force-wide licence in the UK and many other nations around the world. More recently, Systematic has come to market with SitaWare, an off-the-shelf C2 solution that is set to move the market away from bespoke proprietary systems.
Systematic’s services include the development of customer specific solutions, licence sales of products and professional services.
Systematic is a global company with over 450 employees and has strong U.K. presence where it employs 42 people giving a turnover of approx. £7m
Michael Holm was made Denmark’s Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year in 2002 and the company has also won the Gazelle Award, an award given to Danish companies that have achieved significant growth.
Add to that the fact that Systematic is one of the few companies in the world currently certified to CMMI5 and one starts to get an impression of a company that is going places.
Michael Holm
Michael Holm, President and Chief Executive Officer of Systematic, is not surprised that Systematic SitaWare is being used by so many respected vendors and organizations at DSEi.
“All of Systemtic’s solutions are off-the-shelf and based on MIP standards (C2IEDM/JC3IEDM) enabling them to be installed quickly and can be readily tailored to specific hardware platforms,” Holm said.
“Systematic SitaWare is powerful and easy to use, so with minimal training other organizations can present very complex scenarios that demonstrate their capabilities in an operational context.”
“With over 20 years in creating defence-specific technology, we have also formed a close working relationship with many players in the defence domain.”
“Why did you start Systematic and what took you into the Defence market?” the Editor asked.
“When the Danish Navy purchased a Command and Control system in the 1980s from Thomson-CSF there was an offset requirement. The offset requirement was for software engineers. As one of the engineers, I was able to focus on developing software. I made the move to start up my own company after seeing a niche that was being neglected by other vendors and thus set up Systematic. Our first client, ironically, after working on the Naval system, was Thomson-CSF.”
“What proportion of your revenue is defence-based and what growth are you predicting?”
“Defence accounts for 60% of our revenues with healthcare following close behind; there is a commonality b