What are the future plans for the business?
Anas Mawla, Managing Director of Gaia Technologies, was recently interviewed about the future plans for the business. This is an extract from the interview.
Anas Mawla; “The Company will continue to develop its two main products in the education sector.
First, we will continue the rapid expansion of the business in the delivery of Managed Service to the Education sector in both Wales and England. We are forecasting organic growth to reach £24m in the next two years.
Recent changes in England from the UK government’s decision to stop BSF projects, cancel new build projects, and put added impetus behind the Academies programme – are all extremely positive developments for a company specialising in realistically costed and innovative IT infrastructure that are funded from revenue streams.
Our experience in this field, one that blossomed out of the political changes of the last year, mean that our services are in great demand and with relatively few competitors with the same degree of experience. We are ideally positioned to serve the new emerging market- which includes over 3600 Academies.
In Wales, our extensive experience in schools across north and mid Wales (some 150 in all) and realistically budgeted, innovative and friendly approach – are all attractive elements that we hope will be of service to the consortia arrangements that are now forming.
IT support in schools has never been a statutory duty for local authorities and we believe that some benchmarking between providers in both private and public sector will lower costs and invigorate the landscape with new ideas and investment.
We are confident that we could save each local authority at least 10% of their on-going IT support costs. At the same time, schools we support have been known to receive written acknowledgement by schools assessment authority ESTYN, as to the outstanding level of support that they receive- so we are confident we could add significant added value.
Secondly, the company will consolidate its position as a world class leader in 3D development for educational content.
Can you image lessons in 3D? Where you may enter an image, move it, look beneath it or from the side – a highly interactive and highly educational experience that is fully in the hands of the user.
Schools that have adopted this technology point out that it greatly enhances student participation and motivation and that it reduced the time spent in conveying ideas- as the student can more readily observe and understand concepts from what is seen in the classroom.
Gaia is the world’s leading creator of 3D images for the education market. Our range of images is increasing every day from the combined activity of 6 full time software designers and developers.
We are currently actively engaged in introducing the technology to potential users. It is still a product that is extremely new to the market and we need the support of early adopters and curious bystanders in education to be able to see the advantages and explain them to others in education.
Within 5 years we anticipate that this division of the company will generate even more than the remainder of the company- and we also see that part doing extremely well.”