Two days ago, a BIW colleague asked if I had heard of any changes at BuildOnline. His question was sparked by the sudden disappearance of most of BO’s management team from the listing on its UK website (down to just two people: the chairman and CEO – gone are profiles of the VP technology, finance director, the grandiose President Americas and others). At the time, I didn’t know anything, and perhaps it’s unrelated ….
However, in my previous post I linked to a blog talking about Alfresco, and when I researched the Alfresco site more deeply, I noticed a familiar name among its people: Ian Howells. Until very recently, Ian was head of marketing at BuildOnline (succeeeding Richard Moore) and now appears to be Alfresco’s chief marketing officer – like many of Alfresco’s staff, Ian was also previously at Documentum (his CV perhaps deliberately makes no mention of his short time at BO).
I don’t think Ian was actually listed on BO’s people page (he doesn’t appear on a Google cache of BO’s French page I found – though it did list Richard Moore), but, as I understand it, the BO application was originally based on Documentum software and there are a significant number of ex-Documentum staff involved at Alfresco, so perhaps it was no surprise for him to jump ship.
Interestingly, Alfresco are based in Park Street, Maidenhead, just a couple of streets away from BO’s head office in King Street.
