20 Years of BluGem
Our story
We initially borrowed £5,000 to help launch BluGem in May 2005 with high hopes, but no idea of how far the business would go. In the 20 years since, BluGem has taken us West to California, South to Zimbabwe, East to Singapore and to many other countries in-between. The journey has been long but also satisfying, not least because we always remained grounded in our North Devon home, next to an especially beautiful part of the English coast. It is a great metaphor for how to navigate business change in a high-tech and fast paced digitally connected world, whilst remaining true to timeless values like business integrity and supporting the local community. We like to think our success comes from maintaining a healthy work-life balance, a positive team culture and most of all keeping the promises we make; to deliver solutions to the best of our abilities.
Test Call Generators (TCG) were the cutting edge of network assurance technology when we secured the patent for our real-time testing equipment. Our TCG solution is still the cutting edge of network assurance technology, via years of R&D investment and strategic design. We provide precise and independent verification that network services have been delivered as they should, everywhere around the world. I won’t labor the point on all the details of how our technology has evolved; but just get in touch if you really want to find out!
Our success is confirmed by our loyal and wide ranging customers that we have accumulated over the years. Telcos, government agencies, software developers… we meet some interesting and varied people. They all have different priorities, which makes work much more stimulating. And although I'm not much of a speechmaker, it has been nice to accept the odd award. For somebody who likes fiddling with tech, I ended up doing a lot of talking to a lot of people. Perhaps I should have expected that in the communications sector!
It meant a lot to BluGem when we received a government grant that allowed us to invest further in our R&D for our roaming and fraud detection products. I certainly never wanted to go down the route of taking equity investment and then being forced to grow big as fast as possible and then sell out as rapidly as possible. That was the approach taken by some of our competitors. Growing organically helped us to stay close to the needs of our customers and to continue to invest in our products and our team. That is a big reason why our business grows stronger every year when some of our rivals have fallen away.
It may seem an old-fashioned sensibility but as we started to grow, I wanted to not just take, but to also give back. That has always been part of the plan. Sport, the environment and art are all part of living a good life, and we want good lives for our employees, families and everybody around us. Members of our team have done more charity events including fun runs than I can remember – another one is coming up soon. We also sponsor other charitable projects, which is why you will find ‘Bluesky’ bear happily based in our Dev office. He was purchased from an auction to help support the Children's Hospice South West charity.
Our test solution can execute very detailed automated test cases, to support the latest Android devices, verify app streaming and social media content and collate feedback from the 100,000 human testers that belong to BluGem's Global Crowd. A lot has changed since we made our first test call generator. However, not everything changes. The secret to success is to be surrounded by good people, who care about what they do. Working with this team and our customers has been a pleasure and I'm looking forward to the next 20 years.
John Davies, BluGem CEO and co-founder