ICT & media

When altcom moved its headquarters to Penzance in January 2004, it was hardly taking a leap in the dark. Managing Director John Cowles had spent nearly 20 years living and working in the county. Then in 1999 he joined altcom, a Tiverton based company he had helped set up in 1995, which developed sophisticated news processing and taxonomical analysis systems for the news and financial information giant Reuters.

The company built a strong reputation in this field and began to diversify, taking on clients in the global information, environmental and professional and public sectors, for whom it provides scalable and dynamic content management systems for Internet and intranet projects.

The company's success is built on its ability to meet the demand for timely and cost-effective software using tools and methods matched to the scope of the project. It is also quick to spot and act on market opportunities - one reason why it is now developing low-cost but feature-rich e-commerce packages that can be easily tailored to the specific demands of small to medium enterprises (SMEs). The exceptionally high quality of altcom's services was recognised recently when the company achieved the much-coveted ISO 9001:2000 certification for software design & development services.

As with many other companies, altcom's move to Cornwall was enabled by the high level of broadband connectivity that the county now offers. Dave Wilcox, altcoms's Technical Director, explains "Transatlantic conference calls and video conferencing are becoming the norm in this business. We meet face to face with our US clients maybe twice a year but we meet online every week, with messenger and email filling in the gaps. Where we are physically located is really irrelevant - as long as the technology is there."