Huddle (software)

Huddle

Type	Private
Industry	Collaboration platform, Content Management Systems
Founded	2006
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom, San Francisco, California
Key people	Co-founder and CEO: Alastair Mitchell Co-founder & EVP Strategy: Andy McLoughlin
Products	Huddle
Slogan	Collaborate intelligently.
Website	www.huddle.com

Huddle is privately held cloud-based collaboration software company founded in London in 2006 by Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin. The company is co-headquartered in London and San Francisco with additional offices in Washington D.C. and New York City. As of 2012, the company has raised approximately $40 million in three funding rounds from Jafco Ventures, Eden Ventures, Matrix Partners and angel investors.^[1][2]

Huddle has established the Huddle Foundation to provide completely free Huddle software packages to registered charities worldwide, including Barnardo’s,^[3] the Fair Trade Federation and Unicef.

Technology

Huddle is a cloud-based collaboration service that enables enterprise and government organizations worldwide to securely store, access, share, sync and work on files with everyone they need to - regardless of whether they are inside or outside of an organization's firewall. Built to support the needs of today's workforce, Huddle is focused on secure, external collaboration. The service brings together the entire business network of partners, colleagues, clients and contractors into one central online environment where they can work together effectively on content from wherever they are, via whatever device they’re using – PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet.

Huddle is used by more than 100,000 organizations worldwide, including companies such as AKQA, Kia Motors, Williams Lea, Grant Thornton, National Grid, Keolis, Go-Ahead Group, Driscoll’s, Beats By Dre and Panasonic Europe. The company also has strong government credentials and is used by 80% of central UK government departments, including the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Energy & Climate Change,^[4] and the Cabinet Office.

On September 12, 2013, Huddle announced its desktop integrations with Huddle for Mac, Huddle for Windows and Huddle for Outlook.^[5] Removing the need for files to be saved locally and freeing teams from the corporate network, Huddle’s new integrations ensured colleagues could securely work together, store, edit and save files via their desktop applications directly into Huddle’s secure cloud. The launch of Huddle Note followed in December 2013, enabling simple content creation in the cloud, along with a redesigned iOS app.^[6] The Huddle for Office integration launched the following year.^[7]

In 2014, Huddle announced that it had secured a global enterprise-wide agreement with Grant Thornton, one of the world’s leading organizations of independent assurance,tax and advisory firms, which will make the secure cloud collaboration technology available to member firms across the globe.^[8] In addition, Williams Lea, the global business process outsourcing (BPO) company, signed an enterprise-wide agreement with Huddle, adding it to its suite of online tools to further increase the speed at which it collaborates internally and externally.^[9]

In 2013, the company received the award for “Emerging Star of the Year” at the UK Tech Awards 2013^[10] and the "Supplier of the Year" accolade at Computer Weekly’s European User Awards for Enterprise Software.^[11] In addition, the company’s CEO Alastair Mitchell has been selected as one of Computer Weekly’s “Ten Rising Stars” at the publication’s CW Tech 50 Awards.^[12]

Huddle usage in government

Huddle has strong government credentials and the cloud collaboration service is used by 80% of central UK government departments, including the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS). Huddle continues to be the most successful SME Software as a Service supplier in terms of contract numbers on the UK government’s G-Cloud program. As of the end of August 2014, Huddle had secured 206 contracts via the G-Cloud framework.^[13]

On September 12, 2012, Huddle announced that a FISMA-certified instance of its cloud-based content collaboration platform is being developed for U.S. government agencies and organizations as a result of a strategic partnership and technology development agreement with In-Q-Tel, the non-profit, strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community. This instance of the cloud collaboration services enables the U.S. government community to securely discover, access and work on content with people. The technology is currently being developed for two IQT customer agencies, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.^[14][15]

Competitors

See also

• Collaboration platform
• Collaboration software
• List of collaborative software
• Cloud collaboration
• Document collaboration
• In-Q-Tel Investment Portfolio

References

External links

• Official Site
• Company Blog
• Huddle Twitter