msp Tenant Case Study: Gödel Technologies

Gödel is a fast-growing software development company, now a Microsoft Certified Partner. That doesn’t sound exceptional, but it has a number of features which make it rather special.

When you walk into Gödel’s offices, it’s the posters around the wall that strikes the eye: all of them in Russian! Remarkably, Gödel constitutes a science-business link between Minsk and Manchester, since it relies on the exceptional skills of mathematicians and software experts from Belarus. It soon becomes clear that quality and not just price is the reason for this.

The level of scientific skill available is remarkable, perhaps explaining the reason for naming the company after the logician whose insights shook the foundations of mathematics.

Surprisingly, technical prowess is not the whole secret of the company’s success. “Technology is not our most important feature,” explains Terry Bland, Gödel’s Managing Director, “Although it still has to be top quality. Our special feature is our ability to work with our customers rather than for them.”

So Gödel employs exceptional project managers who are not technical, but who can develop an appreciation of what the project means to the users. “We want the project managers to sit in the customer’s shoes, not the developer’s.”

Gödel does not work in any one area, but specialises in the more difficult projects which conventional programming companies are reluctant to undertake. These include visualisation, image analysis and advanced data mining. Their work covers an immense range of applications. It includes the Virtual Soccer Academy, a complete gaming environment which challenges young football fans to interactively study how to play; and developing computational chemistry for the drug discovery company Chimatica which can be performed on a desktop, but which can also be speeded up by enabling tasks to be done in parallel on a supercomputer.

Terry’s roots in the region is probably the reason for the Manchester base, but he is quick to justify this in terms of its level of business activity, excellent communications and quality of life. As a Manchester graduate, he not only benefits from academic links, but is giving back to his University by mentoring some of its young graduate entrepreneurs. “I get a lot from being on msp and from its network with the University and with many others,” he confirms. It is good to see this network operating so effectively, and in both directions.