Christchurch based company Jade Software has partnered with Silicon Valley cryogenics specialists MMR Technologies, in what the company sees is a first step to expansion in the US.
Jade Software, the company behind the JOOB mobile platform, has partnered with a Silicon Valley cryogenics company in a first step to expansion in the United States.
The deal will see Jade’s software embedded in liquid nitrogen manufacturing units by MMR Technologies, a Silicon Valley technology company that specialises in cryogenics, Jade managing director Crag Richardson said.
Mr Richardson said cryogenics dealt with the production and effects of temperatures of 150 degrees below Celsius.
Jade’s software would be used to control the process of manufacturing liquid nitrogen, Mr Richardson said. These units would be sold to laboratories and research institutions, he said, and would have many commercial applications.
MMR bought Jade’s software after a free trial, Mr Richardson said. Trials were high on Jade’s agenda in order to build a presence in the United States, and particularly in Silicon Valley, he said.
MMR chose the software for a variety of reasons, he said.
“The prime thing that they saw was the ease of use, and reliability, and our ability to operate those units around speed and precision and reliability, particularly.”
It was a royalty deal, Mr Richardson said, so Jade would receive a percentage of MMR’s sales.
“It’s a modest deal in terms of financials, it’s not going to dramatically change our financial performance but I think the really important thing for us is we’ve taken a step into the US market, particularly in Silicon Valley.”
Mr Richardson said Jade had only had an office in the Valley for about six weeks, and the deal was the first in what he hoped would be some positive outcomes of being in amongst the technology hub,
Jade Software also has two other products in the US market, most notably the JOOB mobile platform that connects any business system to any mobile device, Mr Richardson said.
In April, JOOB’s beta version was launched by Economic Development Minister David Carter, who called it a “shining example” of innovation in the New Zealand technology sector. The platform had funding assistance from the Ministry of Science and Innovation, NZTW and its Beachheads programme.
Mr Richardson said the company’s main focus was JOOB, but that Jade Software had received a lot of interest from the science and research sector in the US over the last few weeks.
“We’ve had interest in the same technology for use in manufacturing processes, and interest in use of the technology in the analytics area, where they’re doing lots of complex data and having to work with it very quickly, and that’s really our specialty.”
Neither MMR nor Jade Software was targeting the use of cryogenics to preserve people for future life, but Mr Richardson said technically the liquid nitrogen units could be bought by such organisations.
“It would be interesting to know.”
MMR Technologies electronics engineer Matt Buckby said the Jade Software developed would be present in its upgraded solution in use in thousands of laboratories, research institutes and universities.
“Our team chose Jade over several other suppliers. A key factor in the decision was that Jade programmes do not need to be recoded from the ground up as they would in other development environments.”
