LOCKDOWN LEADER: David Richards
“Academic institutions and companies across the world are racing to create a vaccine and we want to help them.” So said WANdisco co-founder and CEO David Richards has announced that his tech company is granting free access to its software, to help scientists find a vaccine or cure for COVID-19.
WANdisco’s software enables organisations to transfer data from their on-site premises to the cloud to avoid an outage. The donation will allow research teams handling vast amounts of data to use the firm’s tools to “speed up” their efforts in the fight against the global pandemic.
“We'd like to help you, while you help save the world,” says a message on WANdisco’s website. “We have released free access to WANdisco's suite of cloud migration and big data tools, for every team involved in developing potential treatments and cures for the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic. We encourage teams working big data processing tackling COVID-19 data, to get in touch and start using our platform to enhance their capabilities.”
Launched in 2005, the Sheffield and Silicon Valley-based company has software that allows researchers working in different systems to share their data globally, and keep it up to date in a fast-moving climate. “Every minute, new data is being generated about people suffering from this disease,” says Sheffield born David Richards. “Finding reliable correlations in this vast amount of data will point to the solution, save lives and end the lockdown crippling the economy. We believe our data software can speed up this process. It is absolutely the right thing for our company to do.”
WANdisco, worth some £220m, has already helped in the fields of agriculture, entertainment and healthcare. “Despite the ongoing restrictions brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, our customers continue to see the underlying imperative of moving data to the cloud,” said Richards.
The Sheffield-born CEO, who made his fortune building and selling software companies, made £2m by his mid-twenties through floating a software start-up, and once raised “$25m on the back of a PowerPoint presentation” during the first tech boom.
His ‘David and Jane Richards Family Foundation’ teaches computing and coding to Sheffield schoolchildren in order to help them with their employment prospects.