Great British Scaleup: Deep3 (Deep Sky Blue)

Deep Sky Blue (DSB) [now known as Deep3 - see update below] is a cyber, defence and intelligence software development start-up based in Cheltenham and Daresbury. It currently employs 43 people split between its two sites.

The business was founded by Richard Yorke (CEO), Paul Boardman (COO) and Richard Hensman (CTO) and began trading in 2015. Yorke and Boardman had previously worked together at Atos.

It won its first contract through the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory’s (DSTL) Centre for Defence Enterprise innovation competition. The R&D project, aimed at lightening the cognitive load for cyber analysts, was called Sherpa. Sherpa utilised machine learning and user centred design techniques to suggest appropriate courses of action analysts should take in response to complex cyber events. The project was a success, but since then a number of large security companies have entered this space, so DSB wisely decided not to take development further, focusing instead on their service offerings. In the world that DSB operates it’s hard for organisations to provide referenceable evidence of previous experience, so Sherpa remains useful to the business.

DSB has grown strongly since it was founded, largely through its partnership with Raytheon and customers in the UK cyber and intelligence sector. It has built a Natural Language Processing system that analyses and assesses unstructured text for compliance purposes. It is also developing a secure order processing and fulfilment solution, and a big data platform for UK government clients. In terms of cloud technologies, DSB are also delivering capabilities for their customers based on containerisation and serverless technologies.

DSB have developed new partnerships (e.g. with RedHat and Civica) and have a solid pipeline in place, creating good opportunities for the business. It will be moving to new premises in Cheltenham and relocating the Daresbury office to Salford shortly. A name change and related rebrand is also imminent (Sky UK’s lawyers have been busy again…).

As we discussed in Cyber Security Market Trends and Forecasts, the volume, diversity and potency of cyber threats continues to expand. This factor, coupled with increasing interest in AI, data and cloud technologies, suggests that DSB’s services will be in high demand. We will watch its scale-up journey with great interest.

Update: Since taking part in the March 2018 Great British ScaleUps event, the business has completed its name change and rebranding exercise. In April 2018 Deep Sky Blue became Deep3, a name it says reflects the depth of its focus in delivering mission-critical software, engineered to meet the highly complex and secure requirements of its customers.

Posted by Dale Peters at '07:12' - Tagged: defence   startup   cyber   intelligence   GreatBritishScaleup