WANdisco aims for more staff as it plans AIM float

Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Richards, the president and chief executive of WANdisco, said he hoped to hire more staff in South Yorkshire soon.

Mr Richards grew up in Sheffield but has spent the last 16 years founding and running software businesses in California.

He chose Sheffield as WANdisco’s European headquarters because of its cheaper operating costs, wide availability of graduates, good healthcare system and access to public sector grants.

WANdisco provides data replication services to major corporations.

It has become a major developer of an open source software management system called Subversion, which is used by six million companies.

Mr Richards said yesterday: “We plan to float on AIM in the first quarter of next year. We need new products to fuel growth. We are also entering the Chinese marketplace. We believe that one quarter of our business will be in the Chinese marketplace within the next two years.

“We have more than 30 people in Sheffield and we are hoping to add 10 to 20 more staff by the end of the year.

“AIM is an excellent marketplace for doing mergers and acquisitions. We expect to announce several acquisitions in the first and second quarter of next year which will be folded into the Sheffield operation. We also expect to announce a number of high profile hires (appointments) in the near future.”

Yesterday, WANdisco also revealed that it had created uberSVN, a product designed to transform the world’s most popular source code management system.

Mr Richards added: “Subversion is the most popular source code management software. Now uberSVN gives Subversion users what they want – an easy to use product that they can extend, however they choose, whenever they want.”