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Wednesday, August 4, 2010
The Mover
StreamServe CTO O'Hagan applies corporate knowledge to small firm setting
By Bridget Botelho, Special to Mass High Tech
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Laurence O’Hagan
Chief Technology Officer, StreamServe Inc.
Education: University College London, Physics
Previous role: CTO for Pitney Bowes Business Insight’s Customer Communications Management division
StreamServe Inc.’s new chief technology officer, Laurence O’Hagan, brings big corporate experience to the small, Burlington-based document management and delivery company while bringing his own career full circle.
The 59-year-old London-based physicist started his long computer software career as an assembly level programmer for International Computers Ltd (ICL).
He quickly became involved with information science for the aerospace and automotive industries and moved to the document management space, where he made a name for himself developing pivotal customer communications software — and he isn’t done innovating yet.
“People think I’m crazy for taking on a new role at my age — they say I should be looking at retiring,” O’Hagan said. “But I can’t do it; I’m not ready to slow down.”
Before taking the position with StreamServe, O’Hagan served as CTO for Pitney Bowes Business Insight’s Customer Communications Management division, where he participated in the development of critical products, including EngageOne Interactive and Content Author.
Yet, O’Hagan craved a smaller, entrepreneurial-spirited company where his innovations would make a big impact. That’s when the opportunity to work for StreamServe presented itself. Now, he’ll lead StreamServe’s developers located throughout the world to grow the company’s business through new product development and different ways of delivering its products, including furthering its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) efforts.
O’Hagan plans to do this with a management style based on team consensus, though he knows at the end of the day, he’ll have to make the big decisions. “I’m not a man with a clipboard, coming in here and taking names. What StreamServe does has been effective,” O’Hagan said. “But there are some changes to be made, and being new, I can be the catalyst for that. It is all about helping the company move its vision and strategy forward.”
O’Hagan’s career path has led him through a number of acquisitions, starting with Archetype Systems Ltd., a U.K.-based document preparation applications and services company.
O’Hagan took on the role of CTO for Archetype in 1986 and there, he came up with the idea for DOC1, the popular electronic document system used to create customer statements, notices and bills that would eventually be PBBI’s flagship Customer Communications Management (CCM) offering.
In 1994, Group 1 Software Inc. saw the value in Archetype’s software and acquired the company for its portfolio of customer communications and mailing software. O’Hagan became CTO of Group 1 and developed more document management software there.
For instance, one of Group 1’s clients was a major news magazine that needed to deliver massive amounts of subscription renewal letters from its mainframe system. O’Hagan came up with software that ran 27-times faster than the traditional methods and allowed document owners to design their own documents while delivering them faster and at lower cost, he said.
In 2004, PBBI took interest in Group 1’s software, acquired the company, and O’Hagan joined PBBI’s team as CTO. Last year, he added the title Global Portfolio Directorship for Customer Communications Management to his job title and led PBBI’s customer communications strategy until moving to StreamServe, where he hopes his innovations will move the company forward.
Bridget Botelho is a freelance writer in Warwick, R.I.
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