Yorkshire should sell itself to the world as a centre for technology

David Richards, the president and chief executive of data replication firm WANdisco, grew up in Sheffield but has spent the last 15 years founding and running software businesses in California.

He said the city and region "could and should" attract more tech firms by improving its marketing and claimed that Scotland and Wales are more effective at getting their message across to potential investors.

Mr Richards said his decision to choose Sheffield was motivated by cheaper operating costs, wide availability of graduates, closeness to London, good healthcare system and access to public sector grants, rather than any sentimental attachment to the city.

Yorkshire compares favourably with India, which has built a massive IT outsourcing industry on its talented mathematicians and resources, although it could do more to encourage inward investment, he added.

"A lot of people are not coming to the region because they don't know anything about it," said Mr Richards. "I have mentioned it to a couple of people and they have been fascinated. There's an assumption that you have to go to India.

"In fact, India has been a bit of a disaster for us in the past, mainly due to cultural, language and trust issues. We don't have any of those problems in Sheffield.

"I have bought loads of people from the US over to Sheffield and they like it."

While the opening in 2008 of the Sheffield office raised eyebrows among some British expats in Silicon Valley, Mr Richards said the office is now involved in core development in addition to support services.

WANdisco plans to double the size of the office to 50 by the end of the year and is recruiting at the moment.

"There is a heavy lean on hiring wherever possible in the Sheffield office rather than the California office for certain jobs," Mr Richards said. This is due to high cost of mid-level programmers in the San Francisco Bay area.

The company provides data replication services to major corporations including BT, Hp, Motorola, Honda and AT&T. It has become a major developer of an open source software management system called Subversion, which is used by five million companies around the world.

WANdisco did "phenomenally" well last year, growing substantially despite the recession, said Mr Richards. "Companies like to lay off and replace with automation software," he added. "We are in that bracket."

At 39, he is already the veteran of several growth stories in the technology sector, starting his career with a UK firm at the outset of the dotcom boom of the 1990s.

He left for Silicon Valley in his mid-20s and was setting up a venture capital fund to invest in start-up companies when he met Yeturu Aahlad, an expert in distributed computing, who presented his ideas on data replication. Mr Richards was impressed with what he saw and the fund bought a majority stake in 2005.

Asked about his future plans, Mr Richards said: "The business philosophy in the US changed. It used to be in 2000 and 2001, that every business was trying to do an initial public offering

and that created a financial exit strategy for the major shareholders.

"We are a very unusual company because we don't have venture capital. We are in a very fortunate position because there is no pressure to exit or be acquired or do an IPO.

"Our business strategy is to grow a very large company."

WANdisco is looking at acquisitions and at the time of our interview was in the midst of acquiring a community site in America.

Mr Richards declined to discuss turnover figures, but described his company as "very profitable" on a per head basis. It has around 50 staff at present and software contracts worth up to $4m, with "much lower" overheads.

Ross Bray, the Sheffield-based vice-president of European operations, is optimistic about the future of the technology sector in Sheffield.

Speaking at WANdisco's European headquarters in the Digital Campus building overlooking Sheffield train station and city centre, he said: "Software is the new face of manufacturing".

Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, gave the company a 500,000 development grant to encourage it to invest in staff in the region.

Making the internet work faster

The name WANdisco is a truncated version of Wide Area Network Distributed Computing. To the computer illiterate, understanding what it does can be a challenge.

David Richards, the president and chief executive, said: "We make the internet work faster by making the data closer to the person that is accessing it."

Ross Bray, the vice-president of European operations, added: "We take information data that's stored and accessed in one place and replicate it over wide area networks across the world so it can be used at the same time in multiple countries. There's nobody else who does this other than ourselves."