Our History

... in the words of our Managing Director, Ian Painter

In 2001, Eddie and I gave up our position at Ordnance Survey (the UK's National Mapping Agency) to set up Snowflake. With a passion for software development and spatial data we wanted to build a company to enable data exchange.

In the beginning we had to quickly build Snowflake's brand and so in true techy style we threw 'code' at the problem (afternote: we've learnt about marketing since then). In a little over 3 weeks we built our first product offering - a free OS MasterMap GML viewer. Free to download, the idea behind the viewer was to attract interest in the company ... 8 years later our OS MasterMap Viewer remains one of the most popular downloads for spatial community in the UK.

We started Snowflake with just under £9000, and so giving away software wasn't exactly the best business model to pay the mortgage. So we set about building our firstly commercial offering - GO Loader. We soon realised that the two us couldn't build the product quick enough and so we needed help. Simon joined the board and we managed to persuade Peter Woodsford - one of the founding fathers of the GIS industry - to join as a non-executive Director. With more manpower and a lot more experience we built GO Loader and sold our first licence to the Landmark Information Group, enabling us to move to a first premises in Carlton Crescent. At the time Landmark used GO Loader to build the largest spatial database in world - quite an achievement for your first customer and I'm very proud that Landmark still remain a customer today.

Don't get me wrong writing software is great, but, if I've learnt anything its that great software doesn't make a great business without marketing, sales and first rate customer service. To that end in 2003 we had to get more organised and more commercial, and that's where I became Managing Director and gave up my career as a software engineer. By the start of 2004 GO Loader was selling itself and we started to have more employees than Directors - which always a good sign in business!

Here at Snowflake we always think to the future, which is why we always re-invest our profits back into the business. In March 2004 we set down the path of building GO Publisher. Our second commercial product, GO Publisher can be thought of as GO Loader in reverse, but the most important thing is that it completes the data exchange picture. In 2005 we moved to our Eastgate House offices where we began providing GML training and continued to expand our customer base and staff. GO Loader continued to sell in the UK and we sold our first GO Publisher licence to run the EDINA DigiMap project.

From day one we had a vision to develop generic Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) software, yes it meant more complexity, but in long term we believed it would provide us with the platform to move into new markets and countries. In 2006 it did, and we sold out first licence outside of the UK to Alterra in the Netherlands. That sale to Alterra then gave us the platform to grow, not just outside the UK but also into new markets. In 2007 more of the same, growth in staff and growth in customers, the difference was that most of our growth was outside the UK, picking up some real flagship customers such as Dutch Kadaster.

In late 2008 we set about redefining the commercial side of the business and developing our Snowflake 2.0 strategy. Despite Snowflake's success we're not afraid to look at the business and say we can do better and that's what Snowflake 2.0 is all about. Snowflake 2.0 has given us four markets and domain experts dedicated to those markets. Under Snowflake 2.0 we no longer just talk about our product features, we understand our customers business and talk in their language, delivering a complete solution through a combination of our products, consultancy and services.

I'm very proud of what the team at Snowflake has achieved its 8 years of business. We've gone from two techies to a truly international business meeting the needs of some of the worlds leading brands. What's more we've done it ourselves, we still remain privately owned, we've been in profitable year on year and we've grown year on year.

Snowflake 2.0 is key part of our history going forward and we're as passionate about the company now as we were when we started up.

There's a lot more history to come from Snowflake so watch this space!