Where is the business that goes on to become a world beater?

Australians are quite capable of doing it. Just look at the recent share market success of enterprise tools business Atlassian.

That firm, famously started by its founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar using $10,000 in credit card debt, listed on Nasdaq last year. It closed its first day with a market value of $5.8 billion.

Yes, that business was “sold” but its name lives on.

It is not always the way for Australian developed mining technologies. 

One example is the two software companies Surpac and Minex. In 2005 the two companies merged to become Surpac Minex.

Then Canadian company Gemcom bought Surpac Minex for about $26 million.

That was, no doubt, a great result for the owners but also a bit of a blow for Australian enterprise because brands and products developed here were no longer owned here.

There was clearly value to be had from the company yet.

That immediately became clear when French giant Dassault buying Gemcom for about $360 million.

Whether the story of those great Australian software brands will end there remains to be seen.

Mining was probably a great idea for the Dassault management back when there was a bit of a boom going on. These days it is probably not quite as much fun. It would probably be of little surprise if Dassault were to lop off its mining software arm in the not too distant future. Perhaps Surpac and Minex may end up back in Australian hands again.

And it is a pretty fair bet that the sale price will be somewhat south of $360 million.

However, the question remains: why is it not possible for an Australian mining technology business to grow to a world leading size?

The innovative talent is certainly here. Just look at the number of game changing mining technologies that have been developed and sold on.

The Surpac and Minex brands certainly proved to have value.

It appears the hiccup comes at the marketing and distribution level.

This is one area Australia has always done poorly in. North American and European firms are much better at it, which is possibly why they end up buying the good Australian ideas.

It is one area that Australia needs to get much better at.

No doubt it will be a core focus of the METS Ignited growth centre that has been created to help grow METS businesses.

The good news is, these skills are becoming available. There are some absolutely world leading Australian executives with these sort of skills and they are becoming increasingly available.

These are the ones that have gone into the North American and European markets, picked up the skills and contacts necessary to thrive there and are now coming back.

One thing METS Ignited will no doubt set to doing is to create a database of those people.

A lot of start ups need help to get even to the point where they can look at developing a business.

That is where Australia is starting to get better. Over the past couple of years a number of accelerators have developed. One is Unearthed, which holds hackathons four times a year.

Another is Energise, which chose eight start ups in the energy and natural resources space and set about helping them get the most out of their ideas.

It also brought together a mentor panel that included expertise from the likes of Samsung’s Silicon Valley accelerator manager Gary Coover and Google, Mountain View strategic partner manager Rohan Thompson. On top of that was input and guidance from Energise program supporters such as Woodside, Resource Capital Funds and Jolimont Global and mining houses such as Fortescue Metals Group.

Australia’s Mining Monthly spoke to two of those start ups, Skrydata and Sentient Computing.

Sentient is a bit of an unusual “start up” case because it has actually been around since the 1990s with its process control systems offering Macroview. It is only of late that it has moved into more visualisation-based technologies.

Skrydata counts a total staff of three and works in the big data space.

Both say they have received massive benefits from being involved in the Energise program.

For Skrydata, besides the business management education its founders received, there also came a link to FMG, which could lead to the one big case study it needs to prove the value of its business.

Basically Skrydata’s founders Dr Jedja Hadzic and Dr Michael Hecker take care of the algorithms and computer systems respectively while managing director Mark Stevens handles the business management.

With FMG Skrydata is working on a crusher optimisation process.

If that work proves successful it hopes to be able to expand those techniques to other companies and potentially other industries.

Stevens said LNG was another area it could also be used.

Sentient managing director Doug Bester said his company had picked up about $500,000 in work since it had taken part in the Energise program.

There were other benefits too.

“One of the benefits of the KPMG program was about shifting our thinking on the the sales process,” he said.

“Instead of pushing our tech we were listening to our customers problems.”

This, Bester said, made selling easier.

Another benefit of the Energise program was that it put Sentient in touch with Woodside, which has driven some collaboration with the resources giant.

Sentient has built a range of products using computer game development platform Unity.

These products are based on what Sentient calls its “MVX” platform.

Back in the day Macroview was known as MV, so this new business approach has become MVX.

On one level Sentient is creating computer games to help train workers to better perform tasks and become accustomed to the environment they are, or are about to be, working in.

One of the options involves using a three-dimensional virtual reality viewer, such as those fitted to Samsung phones, to simulate a work place.

The one AMM viewed was a train handling facility.

The beauty of this sort of simulation is it lets workers virtually perform their tasks but can also demonstrate to them, quite graphically but also safely, the real world consequences of safety lapses.

“We found the best way forward was training,” Bester said.

“We found we could track process information and put it into Unity.

“Using Unity we can assess people in real time.” 

One possible advantage of using the Sentient approach comes in training savings both in monetary and time terms.

“We can say to a company we can assess all your confined space guys,” Bester said.

Through its system Sentient can create a realistic simulation of the sort of confined spaces these workers would be entering.

To “win” all they have to do is fall all the correct procedures while successfully completing the task they have been set in the confined space.

Those that “win” can continue on. Those that “lose” may end up with the consolation prize of a refresher course in confined space practices.

The alternative for the company is to bring all its confined space workers in for retraining.

Using the Sentient system only those that need retraining are identified.

The simulations do not need to be limited to single “players” either.

The company was asked to put together a multi-player simulation for a five-person crew working on a dredge.

As part of the simulation Sentient had to create a three-dimensional render of the dredge but all that was available were photocopies of two-dimensional drawings.

One of the benefits of the Unity system is it allows the image to be “traced” and from that a rather accurate 3D render can be made.

As Sentient was creating its simulation based on the newly-created 3D model of the dredge, one of the mining company’s planning officers happened to walk by.

It turned out there was a maintenance outage planned for the dredge and he believed the 3D model would help with the planning of that outage.

This created another area for Sentient to move into: visualisation.

Besides using its 3D modelling capabilities, Bester realised there was a place for visualisation in big data.

One of the problems facing industry, he explained, was trying to understand the flood of data coming in.

For some of the engineers who work in the process field all the time, the flood of numbers may have some meaning. For those even slightly removed it can be a nightmare.

What Sentient is working on is a visualisation system that makes it easier for managers to get their heads around the data stream.

Sentient has come up with three visualisations keys – a garden, traffic flowing around a city grid and a ball.

With the “garden” when things are flowing well the garden looks green and lush with a stream flowing through it. As problems crop up things start to die off and the stream starts to dry up.

With the cars example, one or two cars circling the grid signal all is well. Increasing traffic indicates problems mounting.

 For the ball, when all is spherical all is well. The appearance of spikes hints at concerns.