Oil giant Shell flogs own software company for $18m

Venture capitalists have secured a controlling stake in oil giant Shell's data warehousing spin-off Kalido with an injection of $18m.

Kalido was originally developed by Shell's internal IT group, which spent $20m developing the software after it was unable to find an off-the-shelf product on the market that could cope with the management of rapidly changing, complex and global data.

It was spun-off as an independent company in 2001, although Shell retained ownership, and Kalido has since secured major enterprise users in the UK and Europe including Cadbury Schweppes, Halifax Bank of Scotland and Unilever.

However Kalido has struggled to break into the US market and last year its revenues were £5m, although the company claims it has reached that figure already for the first six months of 2003. Venture capital firms Atlas Venture and Benchmark capital have effectively bought Kalido from Shell with their cash funding.

Founder and outgoing CEO Andy Hayler will remain as chief strategist and told silicon.com the move will make it easier to attract new customers as well as giving existing ones a more secure base.

"This means complete independence from Shell. That will be useful in certain cases and customers may find that easier to deal with. We'll be able to significantly build on our success in Europe with Unilever, Phillips and HBOS, and replicate that success in the US."

New CEO Bob Potter joins Kalido from Iona Technologies and he said the immediate priority will be ramping up the company's US operations.

He told silicon.com: "The restructuring is very minimal, if any. The only change, so to speak, will be that we will need to have a strong US presence. We will be setting up shop in the Boston area and making sure we have a strong sales leader in the US."