Ambitious Kalido spun off from Shell

Datawarehousing software vendor Kalido has been spun off from its former parent, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies (Shell) after raising funds from two venture capital firms.

Kalido, under the leadership of a new chief executive officer, Bob Potter, has set itself lofty goals, including increasing annual revenue growth by between 50 and 100 per cent. It also wants to dramatically expand its presence in the US market.

The firm, which expects to end the year with revenues well in excess of $10m (£6.15m), has created a strong list of blue-chip customers, including Philips, Unilever and HBOS, as well as former parent Shell.

'Datawarehousing today is still a cottage industry, with most companies trying to build their own tools,' said founder Andy Hayler.

'We provide a packaged application that can bring in data from any source without any additional coding, meaning that firms can very rapidly install a production warehouse.'

Potter says Kalido will continue to grow organically, but doesn't rule out the option of possible acquisitions to spur growth. 'There's a lot of good deals out there at the moment, and we now have available funding should we need it,' he said.

The company will certainly target the financial services market more aggressively, taking advantage of the tidal wave of corporate governance rules being introduced across the globe that require banks and other financial organisations to monitor their data more rigorously (see Computing June 26).

The two venture capital firms that have invested in the company, Atlas Venture and Benchmark Capital, say the vendor's future prospects are strong.