Kainos

Kainos's headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Kainos was founded as a joint venture between Fujitsu and The Queen's University of Belfast business incubation unit (QUBIS Ltd) on 14 April 1986,[13][14] and became one of Northern Ireland's first campus companies. In January 1987, the company began trading in the QUBIS building on Malone Road, Belfast[15] and Kainos founder, Frank Graham, was appointed managing director.[16]

In 1989, Kainos launched an electricity network analysis product for ICL’s Distribution Network Information System, which continues to be supported.[17]

In 1993, Kainos developed the Microsoft-based Meridio product, which is enterprise document and records management (EDRM) software.[18]

A spin-off company of Kainos was established in 1994 called Lagan Technologies, which grew to become a leading software supplier into local government in the UK and the US It was eventually acquired by U.S. based Kana Software in 2010.[19]

By 1997, due to the expansion of the company, Kainos relocated and opened offices in Mount Charles, Belfast, and opened its main headquarters in Upper Crescent, Belfast.[20] Since then, Kainos moved into customer management systems (CMS) and call centre technology, and resulted in the company being restructured in January 1998 to form three business divisions – Customer Management Systems, Custom Solutions and Products.[15]

Historical logo used by Kainos in the mid-2000s.

After several years of business, in which Fujitsu was its main customer, the company sold most of its stake to ACT Venture capital in 2000.[21] ACT Venture capital later divested its shareholding in Kainos.[22] That same year, Kainos worked on a new project developing the core ticketing software for London Underground ticketing.[23]

In 2001, the product Meridio was launched as a separate business division to develop document and records management software, which were sold to a number of system integration and software resellers.[24] Frank Graham resigned as managing director of Kainos in 2001, to become managing director of Meridio,[25] and was succeeded by Brendan Mooney.[3] That same year, Kainos established a joint venture with InHouse Publications called Property News, one of the largest property portal sites in the UK and Ireland.[26]

In September 2004, Kainos entered into a partnership agreement with Mediasurface, the UK's largest content management provider.[27] The following year, Kainos entered into another partnership agreement in 2005 with TIBCO, a provider of infrastructure software.[28]

In 2007, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kainos called SpeechStorm was established, providing automated products for call centres, including touch tone, SMS, speech and visual IVR.[29][30] Meridio was sold and acquired by HP's Autonomy (a company with a long-standing partnership with Kainos[31]) on 24 October 2007 to become Autonomy Records Manager, a records management product.[32][33] That same year, management in Kainos bought out Fujitsu's remaining 20% shares.[21] SpeechStorm, the speech division of Kainos, partnered with Genesys to deliver eircom with the solution to "streamline and optimize customer service", and to transform its customer contact center into a "Dynamic Contact Center" (DCC) on 24 April 2007.[34]

The company extended its Microsoft Gold Partnership on 27 February 2008, with the addition of the Microsoft competency for Custom Development Solutions.[35]

On 9 February 2009, the company was selected by six UK councils to be their IT services partner to deliver their electronic document and records management projects.[36] Kainos launched the National Safeguarding Unit and its website for the NSPCC on 2 August 2009, which provides information and resources to help keep children safe.[37]

On 26 July 2010, Kainos won a strategic SharePoint 2010 EDRM project for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board.[38] Kainos expanded its operations and opened a research office in Silicon Valley on 18 October 2010.[6][39]

Kainos was chosen to take part in a healthcare technology research project in 2011, known as "VERVE", which aims to improve the quality of life for disadvantaged groups including older people and those with neurological disorders. The project is coordinated by Trinity College Dublin and includes partners in healthcare and academia in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and (Germany), who together provide clinical and technical research, practical experience and knowledge in their respective areas of expertise.[40] On 16 February 2011, Kainos launched AppCamp, an opportunity for young developers and entrepreneurs to learn how to create applications for iOS devices.[41]

In 2012 Kainos became a corporate member of the ECHAlliance (European Connected Health Alliance), an initiative based in Northern Ireland and Finland designed to support and promote healthcare and wellbeing.[42]

Kainos launched a scheme called "Earn as you Learn" on 1 May 2013, which allows students to earn a living and develop real-world expertise and experience as apprentice software engineers, while studying part-time for a degree funded by Kainos.[43] On 28 May 2013, a new research and development centre was built next to Kainos's Gdańsk office.[44] Kainos announced its partnership with Cloudera on 17 February 2014, which has allowed Kainos's customers and services to benefit from big data analytics in Europe. The partnership combines both Cloudera Enterprise and Cloudera's Hadoop-based data management solutions, with Kainos specialising in data integration, data quality and project delivery, to meet the needs of large organisations.[45] In 2014, Kainos CTO Tom Gray launched BelTech, a technology conference in Belfast to bring together tech and business leaders from all over the world to discuss emerging technologies, and to educate young people, parents and teachers about careers within the technology industry.[46] Kainos has been the Headline sponsor of BelTech since its inception. Kainos supported Girlguiding's first coding camp with Google and the Raspberry Pi Foundation in July 2014 to provide talks on careers in technology and teach the basics of computer science using Raspberry Pi computers and coding programmes such as Scratch and App Inventor.[47]

The company has been working closely with the IET, and on 1 October 2014, Kainos was formally recognised as a Corporate Partner. This new partnership allows Kainos and the IET to work together to create products, services, support and accreditation workshops, and encourage engagement with the wider engineering and technology community.[48] Meteorix established a partnership with Kainos to enable Meteorix to deliver additional services to their Workday customers by offering Kainos Smart, a cloud-based automated testing tool for Workday implementations.[49] On 19 November 2014, Kainos announced its plans to expand the Evolve Electronic Medical Records platform into Ireland, with the appointment of senior healthcare practitioner and technology expert Anthony Dooher.[50] Kainos Smart was further expanded in the North American market by opening an office in Boston, MA in June 2015.[51]

On 10 July 2015, Kainos was admitted to the main market of the London Stock Exchange, trading as Kainos Group plc.[10][11]

As part of an extension of its US operation, in June 2020, Kainos announced plans to create 133 jobs in Indianapolis. The plans included expenditure of £650,000 to build new facilities in the area, marking the first venture into the US Midwest.[52]

Kainos is a provider of digital services to government departments and agencies across the UK public sector.[53][54]

Kainos has been a Workday implementation partner since 2011, providing management, integration, support and testing services for the Workday SaaS product.[55][9]

Kainos provides digital services to healthcare providers such as hospitals and community care organisations. Developed with NHS clinicians and managers, the Evolve EMR is the main product in Kainos's suite of healthcare products, which automate the creation, capture and handling of medical case notes and operational documents and records.[53][8]