Tech Companies in South England to Watch

Starring Celestro, Crunch, ITAL, Oxford Quantum Circuits, Toc, Twenty7Tec and Wireless Logic.

Our tour of UK tech takes us to South England and places like Reading, Brighton, Bournemouth and Portsmouth.

From Sussex to Berkshire to Dorset, there are a number of top-quality startups, scaleups and established firms in the area. According to a 2021 Tech Nation report, South East England alone was home to seven unicorns, employed over 300,000 people, and boasted a £91 billion turnover in 2020.

As usual, the below companies are just a sampling of the region, but there is a potential goldmine of exciting businesses waiting to be discovered.

Contents

i) Tech Companies in South England to Watch

ii) Previous Features on Companies in England

Tech Companies in South England to Watch

1. Celestro

The youngest company on this list, Bournemouth’s Celestro came onto the scene in late December 2021. In January 2022, it announced preparations for a 2023 launch of its products and services.

Its central offering will be data centre co-location fuelled by, in the company’s words, “100% clean, renewable energy”. However, as the company has yet to make its products and carbon footprint statistics available to the public, this claim could not be verified.

That said, a lot of eyes will be on Celestro and its carbon-neutral data centres when 2023 rolls around.

2. Crunch

Crunch (officially styled as “Crunch.”) is a Brighton-based firm offering online accounting and tax services to startups, contractors, freelancers and small businesses.

It also provides solutions for bookkeeping, business insurance, mortgages, and, for those in the construction industry, registration under HMRC’s Construction Industry Scheme.

Aside from offering accounting services, Crunch also has a sizable business knowledge base with articles from experts in a variety of areas. Articles aimed at helping small or just-starting-out businesses are a particular focus of the company.

3. ITAL

ITAL is a software development house from Portsmouth with a broad range of products and services. From IoT to rail operations to data management, ITAL has developed a number of solutions to meet interested clients’ needs.

Among its offerings is Kinetic, a modular mobile platform which allows companies to mix-and-match various features to craft the platform that’s right for them.

It’s thanks to this platform that, in July 2022, ITAL scored a deal with CrossCountry to digitise the train operator’s revenue protection processes.

4. Oxford Quantum Circuits

An interesting trend in tech has been quantum computing. Using quantum mechanics concepts like superposition and entanglement, quantum computing has the potential to supercharge the world’s computing capabilities beyond what has been possible with traditional computing methods.

A spinout of Oxford University’s Networked Quantum Information Technologies program, Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) aims to be at the forefront of this trend, offering quantum computing services to interested clients. From offering solutions like Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS) to making its quantum computers available on Amazon’s Braket service, OQC keeps a host of quantum computing credentials in its utility belt.

The Reading-based firm counts Cambridge Quantum, the National Quantum Computing Centre and Riverlane among its partners. In July 2022, OQC secured £38 million in Series A funding.

5. Toca

Coming out of Reading, Toca provides what it calls a “low-code application development platform”. Through this platform, it has worked with the likes of the NHS, Australian law firm Slater & Gordon and business advisory service Azets.

On top of Toca’s development kit, the platform allows clients to make use of its pre-built connectors to deploy apps with ready-made integrations for popular apps like Stripe, Twitter, Salesforce, AWS and Google Drive. Though the platform is built for general use,  the company boasts solutions for a few specific industries, including banking, healthcare, legal and utilities.

In October 2021, the firm received £2 million in funding from private investors. While in August 2022, it picked up an investment from personal injury company Winn Group.

6. Twenty7Tec

With a name that brings to mind early-2000s mall-punk bands like Sum-41, Eve 6 or blink-182, Twenty7Tec supplies customers with financial advice and insights via its AI-powered Velocity platform. Through Velocity, the Bournemouth-based firm offers a modular collection of five applications to ensure that users can get the financial insight that might work best for them.

Velocity’s applications are CAPTURE for electronic communication between client and adviser, the web app SOURCE for browsing various mortgage and loan products across the Internet, APPLY for moving data to the necessary places after a product has been selected through SOURCE, INSIGHT for sending user activity data back to necessary parties like intermediaries; lenders; funders; and government organisations, and FINPLAN for a fully customer relationship management solution.

In June 2022, Twenty7Tec acquired Bluecoat Software to use its financial CRM expertise.

7. Wireless Logic

Coming out of Hurley, Berkshire, Wireless Logic is an IoT connectivity and network solutions provider. Among these products is SIMPro, a connectivity management platform which offers automation and cost optimisation services for interested clients.

Aside from this platform, the company provides a number of solutions including VPNs, mapping services and Conexa, a network for things. These solutions work for a number of industries like energy, healthcare, retail, security,and logistics. Notable partners include Teltonika Networks and Google.

In July 2022, Wireless Logic announced its acquisition of mobile virtual network operator Mobius Networks for an undisclosed amount.

Zephin Livingston
Zephin Livingston
Zephin Livingston is a content writer for eWeek, eWeek UK, IT Business Edge, and SoftwarePundit with years of experience in multiple fields including cybersecurity, tech, cultural criticism, and media literacy. They're currently based out of Seattle.
Get the Free Newsletter
Subscribe to Techrepublic UK for weekly updates from Techrepublic and eWEEK on the latest in UK top tech news, trends & analysis
This email address is invalid.
Get the Free Newsletter
Subscribe to Techrepublic UK for weekly updates from Techrepublic and eWEEK on the latest in UK top tech news, trends & analysis
This email address is invalid.

Popular Articles