Digital media specialist joins Sydney software startup

Boutique software development provider SoftwareSeni has lured digital media specialist Paul Russell to become its Managing Director.

Russell left his position as Executive General Manager for Technology and Delivery at Salmat to take up the role with SoftwareSeni. He also previously held the CIO position at Fairfax Digital and was Head of Technology – Digital Media at Network 10.

Russell said the timing is right to move into the booming off-shoring software development industry.

“SoftwareSeni launched in mid-2013 and has since grown rapidly making it one of the fasted growing seat-outsourcing businesses in Australia,” Russell said.

“I joined SoftwareSeni because the off-shoring industry is gaining a lot of traction at the moment and this was an opportunity to do it better.”

Based in Surry Hills, SoftwareSeni combines on-shore product design and project management with its off-shore development and QA team, which is based in the Indonesian university town of Yogyakarta.

This unique combination means clients have a hands-on team for design and project management, but keeps the budget in check by off-shoring the development, making it more affordable for small business to build and grow their online presence.

Russell said seat outsourcing is a good way for SMEs to get more value from web maintenance and development fees.

“These days many small businesses have a good portion of their business on the web and many pay a lot to have it maintained and enhanced,” he said.

“They can either increase the amount of development time spent on their business at the same cost, or maintain the same resource levels and dramatically reduce their cost. Some move from having only a percentage of a developer’s time to one or two developers dedicated to their business, and benefit from the increased focus this gives.”

SoftwareSeni launched last year with two foundation clients – luxury web-based villa rental company Villalet, and an established full-service professional real estate web design and development firm.

For both businesses, SoftwareSeni took over maintenance and development of the business’ online presence and delivered significant results to improve performance, add significant functionality and site stability.

SoftwareSeni has several established small and medium-sized businesses as clients where the on-going maintenance work was taken over, followed by enhancement work.