VOICES FROM THE IT SECTOR
Can you give us a brief synopsis of the company and its operations in Portugal?
The company was established in 2005 as part of the Telcabo Group, a network deployment company for infrastructure for telecoms operators, focusing on IT solutions with software integration. Six years ago, I was invited to be a board member of a group with operations in different countries such as Angola, Spain, Namibia, and Ireland. At the time, Cycloid was still a small software company working for Telcabo. When I left the group at the end of 2014, I acquired Cycloid, as it was a company I knew well. I poured all my dedication and enthusiasm into it. We only had five to eight employees, and today we have grown significantly and have achieved the extremely important goals we laid out beforehand.
What business areas is Cycloid developing in the market?
Our core is a mix of telecoms and IT. Telecoms need to be 99.9% reliable, which is in our DNA. We are shifting from a time where data was not interconnected to a present where all data is in real time. That is where we bring this spirit from telecom to the IT world. Our mission today is to have a smart, ultra-connected world.
How do you help your clients plan, design, and evaluate the best IT solutions for their organizations?
We always try to be as close as we can to the client and understand their reality as much as we possibly can. We give them the best solution that fits whatever challenges they are facing. We then put our best technology people to work alongside the client and try to solve what needs to be solved. We then propose either a business or technology plan along with our vision regarding the solution. Today, we have been approached by many clients and have a wide variety of services. A growing number of clients come to us with challenges they do not know how to solve.
Is Portugal's ICT sector being internationalized?
We have a strategy for internationalization. Our teams work from our offices or directly onsite in countries across Europe and elsewhere, such as North America. That is the reality of our nearshore business unit. We have growing numbers of clients mainly based in Europe and North America looking for a partner that can help them deliver their IT projects successfully, be it by working directly at their offices or, increasingly, through our offices as a nearshore partner.
How did Science4You begin?
Science4You started as my final degree project when I was in university, and 2018 marks 10 years for the company. I began in partnership with the faculty of sciences at my university, which helped me build a business plan. Then I started to raise money and in the first year alone managed to raise USD50,000. We made USD20 million in sales in 2017. In the last 10 years, we have found the right balance between education and fun: we have kept children entertained, and they are having fun whilst learning.
How important is it for children to play with tangible toys instead of video games or watch television?
Tangible toys are important, though video games are important as well. However, there are many capacities that are not learned in front of a screen. Creativity is something that is built away from a screen, as are creating relationships with parents and society and developing leadership skills. That is something we want to develop in children. We create different projects and experiments that the entire family can play. It is a toy that enables children to pass the time with their family and learn with a hands-on and experimental approach.
How can technology services help organizations overcome business challenges?
In the last few years we have seen the digital world evolve. Indeed, the digital transformation came with a clear message that technology is at the heart of today's business innovation and customer interaction. The major reason is because technology is now, more than ever, widely available due to the cloud and mobility. And the biggest cloud providers, like Microsoft, are delivering major innovations that are easier and faster to implement. In this dynamic context, the main challenge for most organizations is to lead their business and transform by taking advantage of these technological innovations and not be left behind. For that, they need to optimize and even transform their operations and innovate their products and service offerings. Unipartner helps organizations along this digital transformation journey. Our system integration and consulting services cover the design and build, support the operations, and demand for continuous innovation.
How would you describe the evolution of Opensoft since it was founded in 2001?
In the beginning, the company was mainly focused on the public sector and developing software for tax and public administration. Our first projects were related to the development of a tax administration portal and a project that would receive income statements from the entire Portuguese population. Until today, we have been working on these projects, among several others, in different areas such as financial services, education, and public services. As the company grew, we started to gain international experience from projects in Brazil, Sweden, and elsewhere. Soon after, we increased our focus on Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa. Opensoft has been growing steadily and at present has 70 employees.
What is your strategy to maintain steady growth?
We depend mainly on the Portuguese economy. Although fluctuation is a problem, we are adopting a niche proposition. We are not addressing the whole market but have a value proposition that targets companies that are usually stable and can pass through fluctuations without facing extreme problems. What differentiates us from our competitors is our expertise in developing a special type of business-critical application.
What are some of your major recent achievements?
In 2018, we set out to grow by 10%. The biggest potential for market growth is the ICT market, an area where we cover communication infrastructure, collaboration and video infrastructure, security, data center and virtualization, software development, and system integration. We have interesting projects with all our clients and, undoubtedly, NOS and Vodafone are two of our most important clients. Similarly, we work with US-based Verizon and UK-based Colt to provide implementation and support to their clients in Portugal. We also provide specialized field service and consulting for manufacturers like Bosh, Chek Point, Cisco, Fortinet, Huawei, Schneider Electric and integrators like Axians, Glintt, Regra, and Thales and assist them with the implementation and maintenance of different systems across Portugal. Our field service consists of more than 600 internal and external professionals, and our team works across the country. We can carry out more than 200,000 requests for intervention every year across Europe.
Can you tell us how Blue Screen was established in software and IT?
The company was established in 2000 as a small firm with no outside investment. We began growing our client network based on development and implementing systems, growth that came from customer references without any commercial or marketing activities. We got attention from fairly large companies and multinationals. Naturally, we began with their subsidiaries in Portugal and word spread, so we started working for other countries, namely Spain, Italy, and Brazil. Soon our work in these southern countries started to gain the attention of northern countries. We introduced agile methodologies and technology, namely low-code, a huge factor in the digital transformation of companies, and gained the attention of a wider variety of customers in much larger companies than our own.
Do any particular markets present great growth opportunities?
The UK has a way of doing business that is difficult for a Portuguese company or any European one to operate without being in the country. We know this from our own experience and from colleagues who created companies like ours. The Scandinavian countries are far more accepting and realize it is a great idea to have a development partner in Portugal.
Can you give us an overview of the history of Beta-i?
Beta-i was created as a non-profit in 2009 during the crisis with the belief that Portugal, especially Lisbon, could become a major hub for innovation and startups. It was led by individuals with an international background. We have been supporting the development of tech start-ups here by doing capacity building for next generation entrepreneurs. We have also been attracting entrepreneurs from abroad through events and accelerators in order to create a community. After that, many start-ups started coming to Portugal. We also became a partner for big corporations involved in digital transformations. With start-ups at the European level, most are B2B or B2C, so partnering with corporations makes sense. When you create an ecosystem, it must have talent and a change in the culture. About 10 years ago, there was no real culture of entrepreneurship, but today there is. The biggest challenge is that many Portuguese lack an international mindset, which is natural because we are a small country. We also needed investment and thus created a venture capital company. We now have an EUR11-million fund and seek to be one of the first investors in early-stage start-ups in Portugal.
VOICES FROM THE IT SECTOR
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Focus: Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries
Making an Impact
Established in 1996, the Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries (CPLP) is a mechanism geared at linking and sharing the experience of Lusophone countries. Besides Portugal, this includes Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
read articleFocus
Don’t Mind the Disruption
Having won the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest, Lisbon hosted the 2018 event. The relevance? Well, the contest began back in 1956 as a showcase not only of song, but of then-nascent live television broadcast technology. Today, Portugal is on the cutting edge of new technological developments.
read articleInterview
João Pedro Soeiro de Matos Fernandes , Minister , Environment and Energy Transition
The Ministry for the Environment and Energy Transition is focusing on decarbonizing the economy, valuing the territory and its habitats, and striving for a more circular use of the country's resources.
read articleInterview
António Braz Costa , General Manager, Portuguese Technological Centre for the Textile & Clothing Industries (CITEVE)
CITEVE has transformed the industry by promoting value addition, adopting the latest technologies, and ensuring the highest standards of environmental sustainability.
read articleFocus: New airport
Right Time to Seize Missed Opportunities
Portugal has seen its air traffic figures increase by as much as 80% in the last five years. As a result, its transportation infrastructure, and Lisbon's airport in particular, cannot cope with the rising numbers. A new airport project that will turn a military base into a commercial airport is now under discussion to bring much-needed relief to air traffic.
read articleInterview
Germano de Sousa , President, Grupo Germano de Sousa
Grupo Germano de Sousa's success can best be summed up by its understanding that science and medicine only really progress when technological development is combined with a deeper respect for human values and professional ethics.
read articleInterview
Isabel Capeloa Gil , Rector, Universidade Católica
Having pioneered the introduction of multiple subject areas to Portugal's tertiary education scene, Universidade Católica is aspiring to establish the country's first private medical school and introduce cutting-edge digital transformation.
read articleInterview
Carlos Guillén Gestoso , President, Escola Universitária de Ciências Empresariais, Saúde, Tecnologias e Engenharia & President, Atlantica University
Atlantica University differentiates through its company-university model and an MBA program in partnership with the University of California, Berkley, among other initiatives, to produce practical theoreticians.
read articleFocus: Public teaching staff
An Age-old Problem
Over a decade of austerity measures combined with an ageing population have seen the average age of the Portuguese public teaching staff progressively climb to one of the highest in the OECD. With frozen salaries, an extended retirement age, and precarious working conditions, today the sector faces one of its biggest challenge yet.
read articleInterview
Pedro Queiroz , General Manager, Federation of the Portuguese Agri-Food Industry (FIPA)
Portugal's economic recovery has seen its F&B sector emerge with annual turnovers of EUR16 billion, thanks to FIPA's undeterred focus on stable policies, excellent nutrition standards, and sustainability.
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