How did 6pm come about?

Way back in 1995, I had got a job in Ireland and I moved to Dublin. I was working for a company called Mysis. My role was doing agile development and systems analysis and design. After a successful eight months there, I managed to get a job at British Airways as a DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method) consultant, one of a team of 13.

When I was at British Airways I'd given my heart and mind to the company. I did extremely well and as a result of that, BA gave me the opportunity to get some more Maltese people involved.

This is how 6pm has basically started - I employed these people and we all started working together. Eventually, in 2000, I officially registered 6pm in Malta.

Up to 2004, the company used to employ around 10 people in total and we only had two British customers: British Airways and Bax Global.

However thanks to my role as international business development director for the DSDM consortium, I managed to do a lot of work in Canada, America, Scandinavia and India.

Effectively, the company kept ongoing because of my role as director of the consortium, I made a lot of contacts.

When Malta joined the EU in 2004, a huge opportunity beckoned. Without entering into politics, because I am not interested into politics at all, the opportunity was very evident. Now we had a market of 500 million people and how do I get to that market?

What we did was we launched a couple of new services. We launched them during an event on a boat called "Aurora" in 17 May, only seventeen days after Malta joined the EU. It was the first time I had introduced 6pm to a number of companies in the UK. As a result of that, there has been an extreme growth.

In February 2005, I managed to create a partnership with two people in the UK and registered 6pm UK. We now have an office in the UK and have eight people working for the UK operations full-time.

Since then things kept on growing because we have sales people on the ground, account managers on the ground, and the company is steadily growing. I believe that 6pm is definitely becoming a key player on the local ICT scene.

How many employees do you employ at present?

At present we employ 105, out of which 40 or 45 are Maltese and the rest are British. The reason why we have British employees is firmly because we do not find all the skills on the island as yet. In fact at 6pm we are doing our best to influence the curriculum both at University, MCAST and other training institutions like that at Swatar.

The people we employ from the UK are testers, as unfortunately in Malta you do not find any testers. Although lately we've issued a call for applications to open up even that area and start employing testers from Malta. With success I can say that we will start employing the first three.

The objective is, even with the ETC, that we keep on training more Maltese in the area of testing so that we start replacing the British people that work in the UK for 6pm and we get them all to be Maltese.

I would love them all to be Maltese, first of all because I want to fly the Malta flag, second I firmly believe the Maltese have a lot to offer. They can offer very good quality. Third, being very honest about it, there's no doubt that the cost model and the business model works better when we employ Maltese people.

It's not because I want to say that Maltese people are cheap, but it's more cost-effective. There is a huge difference between the two terms.

Who are your customers? Are they exclusively from abroad?

6pm is wholly export-oriented. All our customers are in the UK, Scandinavia, America and Canada. We never looked at the Maltese market for two reasons. First there is a lot of competition and I do not think there is space for 6pm there. Second, I believe that if I continue being inward-looking, our company's life-cycle will be much shorter. On the other hand, in a foreign market, you have a lot of opportunity to be innovative. And innovation carried a lot of weight in 6pm.

6pm today has more than 12 service and product offerings. We have some very good products which have been very-well received in the foreign markets. And we have very good service offerings and customers, Global ICT players such as Capgemini and Sungard Vivista are effectively buying services from 6pm.

We are now very close to open a new market, Ireland. We have good opportunities there, but I cannot give any more details at this stage as nothing has been finalised yet. However we are confident that in the next six months, we would have broken into Ireland.

Besides Ireland, are there other markets you are eyeing?

Not really. The reason is very simple. I like to focus on one thing at a time. When you are investing in a market, you have to spend so much money, make so much marketing, learn so much about it that if you try to get into a lot of markets at the same time, you will get hurt.

For instance, there were a lot of Maltese people encouraging me to join them and invest in Libya. I do not have anything against Libya, but I think that at this time we have too many commitments and too much work to do in the UK to make it feasible at this stage to go to Libya.

Moreover, some of my clients, such as British Airways, Capgemini, and Sangard Vivista (the largest supplier of policing solutions in the UK) might have security issues if I get into Libya.

What type of products does 6pm offer?

Our products are so innovative that we call them 'the fun products'. Whenever they use them they find them extremely exciting. We work with businesses rather than with other IT companies. With one of our products, for instance, you can design a form on a magnetic white board using magnetic blocks. Then a picture of that white board is taken with a digital camera, it is scanned and then there we created special software which produces that form in a technical environment. That type of product is called an agile product.

This month we will be launching reporting software, so we are developing a suite of programmes for the agile industry. There is huge interest by companies like Microsoft and Business Objects in these tools, so you are encouraged.

In the area of services, we offer multiple solutions. We do system development work for clients in the UK. Currently we are doing systems for hospitals, educational institutions and many local councils.

We have some of our people who are working in the UK on these projects as there are security clearing issues and work cannot be done here in Malta. We are also offering the possibility of testing software for SME's, and so far there has been a positive response to our proposal.

We also have a huge market in business intelligence. Many of our employees have extensive knowledge about specific business software, so we can help clients develop their BI strategy.

How do you describe the climate you are currently working in Malta as regarding ICT?

The biggest encouragement is that I am sure that the government is seriously committed to the ICT industry. And I believe that every government would be committed to it. Especially in view of the fact that our small island has all the technological resources and the human expertise in technology.

We are working in a very positive climate because we have realised that when we call government departments and entities for assistance, we find a lot of help. We are not interested in financial help. Certain decisions in our business have to be taken extremely fast. Unfortunately government has a lot of bureaucracy, like any other government in the world, but through people in the departments, the ministry and the ETC, we are managing to cut through the chase of bureaucracy.

How will the proposed Smart City affect the local ICT industry?

First of all, with a Maltese hat on, I would like to congratulate Malta for what has been achieved. On the other hand, Smart City will be employing over 5,000 people, out of which around 3,600 people will have to be IT people. We all know that at present Malta does not have 3,600 IT professionals. My estimate would be that Malta has around 1,500 IT professionals who are all employed with different companies. If they are absorbed in Smart City, there is the risk of demolishing a church to create another one. Therefore in my role as managing director of 6pm, I am thinking a lot about this. What will be the impact on my business when Smart City arrives? For Smart City to be a success, it is not only important to have the investment, but also to attract the major companies like Sony, Microsoft, Siemens, Fujitsu to Malta. If they come, they will not come to enjoy the sun, but because they believe that in Malta there are good people in ICT which can be employed.

If government is not going to produce the required volume of ICT professionals, one of the first things that will probably happen is that these major companies will be able to offer a better package to my employees that then I do, and probably my people will end up working with them. So I might have a problem when Smart City really starts going.

How can this problem be resolved? Is there the possibility of a brain drain?

I have three possibilities in my mind. First, as 6pm I always try to create an environment and values which are not exclusively based on money. Here at 6pm there is an element of fun as well as loyalty, which does not come from money but from the environment you are living in. I believe we have become a huge family here. It is up to us in the management to keep the team united.

Second, I will be speaking to third year and fourth year University students to engage more young people to work with us and try and keep them for the next five to six years. I have also taken up students from the ETC. Honestly, I am also looking at the possibility of getting people from Eastern Europe. However there is a simple problem: they do not speak English as fluent as we do, so I cannot send them to work in the UK.

Notwithstanding all this, since there are remedies, Smart City remains a positive thing. I believe Smart City will also offer opportunities for ICT companies in Malta, for which 6pm will be gearing up by 2008.

What can government do to create the critical mass needed to cater for these new jobs?

The education institutions which produce the ICT people in Malta - University, MCAST, and the Swatar Training Centre - must really work in a collaborative and cooperative approach.

Moreover, major companies like Sony, Microsoft, Siemens, and Fujitsu will not take up people straight from University because University only prepare you up to a certain extent.

Therefore an apprenticeship scheme should be created for University students who graduate in IT this year and in 2007 to be employed with local ICT companies like 6pm in order for them to build the experience necessary. I am ready to work with government to invest in the national asset - people.

How much do you think the fact that University now has an IT-oriented rector will help in this matter?

I am sure that once Prof Juanito Camilleri becomes rector, he will give a lot of space to people from the industry to speak with him, tell him what we think is needed. I am sure that this man will turn University into a commercial enterprise. No profits, fine, but it will become a commercial enterprise which will focus on deliverables. And the deliverables are not only churning out people with certificates because certificates are not everything. I look forward to Prof Camilleri taking up the post.

How can more students be attracted towards taking IT?

It is not enough to offer the IT subject at school level. There is also the need for a programme where people from the industry and ex-students go to secondary schools from the third to the fifth form and show them the job opportunities available in the IT sector, whose salary compares well with other professions.