Glasgow tech firm snapped up by Japanese giant

A GLASGOW-BASED internet of things (IOT) company has been acquired by Arm, the Japaneseowned software and semiconductor giant.

Stream Technologies, set up by one-time accountant and marketer Nigel Chadwick in 2000, rose to prominence through its development of an advanced software platform, which enables machine to machine communication. The company had built the only platform able to link the entire UK and European ecosystem of machine-generated data, which is transmitted from everyday devices such as smart meters, cars, washing machines and vending machines via SIM card.

Arm, which was acquired by Japan’s Softbank for £24.3 billion in 2016, did not disclose the value of the deal, which it said will expand its IOT connectivity and device management capabilities.

Hikka Mukkamala, senior vice president and general manager for IOT cloud services at Arm, said Stream brings a “highly complementary solution” to its device management offer. That comes at a crucial time as the number of devices entering the market is expected to rise by 100 billion in the next four years.

“It gives our customers the ability to manage these billions of devices, and do it across multiple networks with a single pane of glass,” he said. “It brings a solid team, it brings solid technology, and customers who we can start innovating with.”

Mr Mukkamala declined to say how many staff Stream employs but emphasised that the team will be joining Arm. Further staff could be recruited as the products are integrated and more customers are won.

“One of the main reasons why we acquired Stream is how complementary it is to what we do, how it actually accelerates giving value to our customers,” he said. “We actually are going to innovate a lot and grow the organisation so we can take the product faster to market, and serve a large number of customers together.”