Abelon revels in Showcase's networking opportunities
Abelon revels in Showcase’s networking opportunities
The Scottish Technology Showcase is an important event in the calendar for companies such as software design consultants Abelon Systems.This will be the third time the Edinburgh firm has appeared at the event and managing director Ian Smith is in no doubt of its importance: “We generate a lot of our business on a face-to-face basis. We don’t market ourselves, we don’t spend on advertising, we don’t do cold calling – all our business comes through referrals. We find the Showcases very useful for networking and for meeting up with current and prospective clients.
”The show itself really attracts a very diverse cross-section of the business community,” he continues, “There is a really good mix of companies, investors and visitors there to network with.”
Ian also stresses the value of being able to “wander around” the event as it provides insight into what other people in the industry are up to in a way that just monitoring activity through the press cannot.
Abelon recently celebrated its fifth birthday and has expanded significantly in this time. The company develops embedded systems, particularly in the field of data acquisition and telemetry. With a background in the telecoms industry, Ian has found that a lot of the technology developed in this sector in the 1990’s is only now percolating into other sectors.
The same technology which was designed to monitor, for example, the telephone systems of a major city is now assisting oil companies in Aberdeen to keep an eye on their assets so they can neutralise problems before they arise and maintain a strong watching brief over equipment that may be 50 or 100 kilometres out to sea.
It is not just the oil industry which is acknowledging the benefit as Ian explains: “We have clients in markets such as energy, defence, mobile, biometrics, telecoms, industrial automation and building management systems – in fact we have got a project on with a local company developing an intelligent building management system at the moment.”
As a Scottish company at the leading edge of software development, Abelon is an ideal participant in the Scottish Technology Showcase and it is little wonder the business has felt the effect of appearing previously: “We have some very good leads from the last couple of shows so I am quite positive that we will come across something valuable this year again,” Ian adds, “Although I can’t tell you what that will be yet because you never know who is going to be there.”
For further information on Abelon visit their website.
You can visit Abelon at the Scottish Technology Showcase, stand number 49