Published on the 18/06/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

Sydney based big data business RoZetta Technology will switch its focus from developing software products to more solutions selling as it grapples with capital constraints…

RoZetta was launched as a new brand in Sydney’s technology market with great fanfare earlier this year, but less than three months later its high profile CEO, Ian Oppermann, left after a clash with the board.

A commercial offshoot of Sirca, a not for profit big data organisation owned by 42 Australian and New Zealand Universities, Opperman had intended to use RoZetta’s big data smarts to build products for an international market. In particular he envisaged a commercial big data platform called Hercules and an analytic system called Athena to report, monitor, visualise and detect trends.

Opperman, a former head of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)’s ICT flagship, had crafted a three year plan for the organisation – initially focused on transformation, then growth and finally consolidation.

He said that there was a difference in his growth expectations and plans and those of the RoZetta and Sirca board. “The level of ambition was different – mine was greater.

“I wanted to grow quickly rather than respond to requests. It will still be successful – but this is a big area and there is a lot of competition,” he warned.

Gail Pemberton is chairman of both Sirca and its commercial offshoot RoZetta Technology, and said that while the Hercules and Athena products would still be developed, probably by September this year, the focus in the future would be on selling those products to universities, and then developing solutions for the commercial sector.

RoZetta’s largest client to date has been Thomson Reuters, though it will likely lose that customer once it has completed building the replacement for Thomson Reuters’ Tick History platform. It has however picked up Morgij Analytics as a new customer.

Pemberton added that the company had also been working with one university on a “very significant data platform/Internet of Things build.”
She donwplayed that there had been a “big change in strategy”, instead terming it as a change of emphasis, in part because of the capital that was available to RoZetta. “We can’t afford a ‘build it and they will come’ approach,” she said.

The risk as Opperman sees it is that by delaying investment, RoZetta could be gazumped by nimbler international rivals in the big data market.