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Volantis was a
mobile internet The mobile web refers to mobile browser-based World Wide Web services accessed from handheld mobile devices, such as smartphones or feature phones, through a mobile or other wireless network. History and development Traditionally, the World ...
software company based in
Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildf ...
,
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, now owned by Antenna Software, Inc. Volantis provides mobile applications and software solutions which give operators and enterprises access to a
content delivery platform A content delivery platform (CDP) is a software as a service (SaaS) content service, similar to a content management system (CMS), that utilizes embedded software code to deliver web content. Instead of the installation of software on client ser ...
and a device database, which contained over 7,000 handsets as of February 2010. Volantis was part of the
W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
'
Mobile Web Initiative
a member of the
Open Mobile Alliance OMA SpecWorks, previously the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is a standards organization which develops open, international technical standards for the mobile phone industry. It is a nonprofit Non-governmental organization (NGO), not a formal governme ...
and an advocate of
Open Standards An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definition ...
.


History

Volantis was founded by Jennifer Bursack, Martin Gaffney, Brett Nulf, and Mark Watson, who had all worked together at
Tivoli Systems Tivoli Software encompasses a set of products originally developed by Tivoli Systems Inc. IBM bought the company and ran the operation as its Tivoli Software division. Additional products were acquired and run under the Tivoli portfolio brand. ...
(a subsidiary of IBM) in the UK. In March 2000 the four founders resigned from IBM and approached investors under the name Unwired Ltd. The company name was changed, a few months later, to Volantis Systems Ltd. – the taking its name from the constellation
Volans Volans is a constellation in the southern sky. It represents a flying fish; its name is a shortened form of its original name, Piscis Volans. Volans was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirks ...
. The company's logo is a representation of the constellation. The initial idea, which the founders took to investors, involved "developing a yellow pages-like directory service for mobile phones". This was soon dropped in favor of creating "technologies to enable companies to build web sites for all sorts of devices—smart phones, kiosks, digital televisions, gaming consoles, and...mobile phones". The company received an initial investment of $3.2m from
Kennet Partners Kennet Partners is a private equity investment firm that provides growth capital to software, Internet and technology-enabled business services companies in Europe and the US. Kennet Partners is headquartered in London, England, and has an offi ...
in mid-2000. In 2001, the company received a round of funding led by
Softbank is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...
Europe. The company grew quickly until the collapse of the
Internet bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compos ...
and the events of
11 September 2001 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
forced Volantis to downsize and consolidate. Several significant telecommunications account signings (including Telefonica and
Hutchison Whampoa Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL) was an investment holding company based in Hong Kong. It was a Fortune Global 500 company and one of the largest companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. HWL was an international corporation with a dive ...
) helped the company to recover and led it to change from offering "a multi-device service to a single device service", as "an enabler for mobile phone carriers." Another funding round, led by
Accel Partners Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ...
, was completed in 2002, and in July 2005, Volantis raised a further $7.5 million, bringing the total venture capital raised to $31.6 million. This achievement was recognised by Fast Track, who included the company in their
Tech Track 100 The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 is an annual league table published in association with The Sunday Times newspaper in the UK. It ranks Britain’s 100 private technology (TMT) companies with the fastest-growing sales over their last three years. ...
(run in association with ''
The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'') in 2006.


Awards

Successful fund-raising, a series of high-profile client wins and expansion into America, which "helped to boost sales 120% a year from £1.6m in 2003 to £7.9m in 2005" led to the company's inclusion in Fast Track's Tech Track 100 in 2006. In 2010, Volantis was selected as a Distinguished Honoree in the Telecoms category at the
Stevie Awards The Stevie Awards are a set of eight business awards competitions staged annually by Stevie Awards, Inc., which grew to fourteen categories by 2017. They were created in 2002 for companies and business people. Its first program, ''The American B ...
for international business achievement in recognition of their mobile self-care solution.


Open Source contributions

Volantis released a
Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...
-based
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
framework for web applications building by mobile developers in early 2008.


Acquisition

Volantis was acquired by
Antenna Software Pegasystems Inc. is an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1983, Pegasystems develops software for customer relationship management (CRM) and business process management (BPM). The company has been publicly tr ...
in February 2011; the financial details of the acquisition were not released. Antenna Software was, in turn, bought by
Pegasystems Pegasystems Inc. is an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1983, Pegasystems develops software for customer relationship management (CRM) and business process management (BPM). The company has been publicly tr ...
in 2013.


References

{{Reflist


External links


Antenna Software, Inc.
Companies based in Guildford Software companies of the United Kingdom