Company Tideway Systems
Aim Provides a shared platform for technologists to visualise and report on the data they need to make informed decisions
Icon I use James Watts's improvements to the steam engine as an example for my team on how we must improve on what has come before

It may be hard to summon up as much excitement for IT infrastructures and data centre optimisation as you would for Web 2.0, but Richard Muirhead, CEO and chairman of Tideway Systems, says he still gets a buzz from solving his customers' problems. Technical jargon aside, the figures speak for themselves: his previous business, Orchestream, reached a market capitalisation of £1bn before it was acquired, while Tideway was ranked 11th in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 last year.

Muirhead founded Tideway in 2002. He's worked in the corporate environment as entrepreneur in residence at Accel Partners and a senior consultant at Monitor Company but says he enjoys the creative process of being an entrepreneur too much to be top dog at a bigger software company. "You get addicted to it," he says. "In a larger company, you don't feel that sense of ownership."

He says the trend to get more out of data centres—what he calls the trend of automation and work socialisation—means his sector is "hot" and high-growth. But, he says, he's had to carefully pick the investors who best match his ambition for the business and understand its structure: "We've got high growth potential because these straining data centres have no space and businesses want to get more out of them," he explains. "That merits the deployment of quite a bit of capital quickly to go and capture it. You've got to identify the financiers who want that kind of investment opportunity and tune into them."

He says he'd like to see more support for UK start-ups: "There's a deeper talent pool in Silicon Valley, more support and the VC business over there is more developed. You also tend to have local customers who are ready to give things a go. But you can still find people who want to be involved in building European companies. You've just got to go out and find those people."

Muirhead says Tideway doubled revenues last year and aims to do the same again, even with a downturn: "Helping companies get more out of their IT estate and data centre will always be valid."