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In relation to the Indian development offices, it can only be that Mr Dickinson's previous experience with the individuals concerned, and the .Digital success is such that there is proven advantage to achieving first mover advantage on new solutions ( and improved ongoing service ) by bringing their collaborative partners in house.

They must therefore be seeing encouraging results from the collaborative period..

Without knowing what the future holds, and without more information, I imagine the two offices are ' inherited' from the existing set-up, with developers working at each, and the geography within India so far as Castleton is concerned is unimportant just at the moment.

As you say, things are being 'tee'd up' for next year.

Extending on my last, I've often thought that Kestrel, by trading as they do, play a key role in maintaining the price at what might be seen as an acceptable level.

Maybe unduly cynical, but it's possible a potential rise in share price would be more 'beneficial' all round next financial year. Just a passing thought really.

Leads me to believe there is significant progress ahead.

Castleton expansion in India provides strategic scalability to enhance services

Castleton Technology plc has expanded its operation with new offices in India, which officially opened on 10th December 2018. Operating from Bangalore in the south and Baroda in the north, Castleton India will enhance the company’s capability for development and testing of new social housing software solutions, with a team of 16 people across the two offices.
The move will extend Castleton’s existing ‘bandwidth’, complementing its UK operations and providing additional resources to enable new solutions to be brought to market more quickly while also improving customer response times by delivering enhanced functionality across existing solutions.
Commenting on the launch of Castleton India, CEO Dean Dickinson said, “This move represents a strategic alliance that will add reliable scalability to our UK based organisation. The development team at Castleton UK have been working with the team in India under a collaboration agreement since March 2018 and together produced our latest offering, Castleton.DIGITAL, which was launched successfully earlier this month. We are all very excited about this expansion of our business and look forward to forthcoming projects already in the pipeline.”
Mukesh Patel and Sushil Tasgaonkar, experienced and well-respected figures in the software sector in India, will be respectively Non-executive Chairman and CTO & Managing Director of Castleton Indian operations. Both worked alongside Dean Dickinson over a number of years before Dickinson joined Castleton, and together with Ian Niblock, Director of Development & Product Strategy at Castleton in the UK, represent a trusted team able to deliver on Castleton’s strategic objectives.
With over 600 existing customers, Castleton provides solutions to housing associations seeking to streamline the management of their properties, tenants and workflow. “What sets us apart is our integrated technology to empower our housing providers,” Dickinson concludes. “Where others provide either managed IT services or software solutions, Castleton deliver the most comprehensive set of solutions and services, that interface with customers’ existing systems. That’s what we’re known for and that’s what we’re investing in with Castleton India. It’s an exciting time for the company and we welcome our new colleagues to the Castleton community!”
 

Bit more on website on successfully migrating customers to the private cloud in Managed Services - good for customer and the company.

https://www.castletonplc.com/2018/12/11/case-study-teign-housing-deploys-new-hosted-housingbrixx/

And they sold some more. Unsurprising.

New article re. Desktop as a Service ( pay per user ) with other solutions to be added. Illustrates Castleton appeal now on a cost effective basis to the whole range of associations as the ' one stop shop' it sought to become.

https://www.castletonplc.com/2018/12/05/croydon-churches-housing-association-improves-service-delivery-with-castletons-desktop-as-a-service/?utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=

They usually send over that Paudie O'Shea, as back-up.

The island of Ireland seems to be good ground for them.

Castleton are at Northern Ireland Housing Federation on 5th. December, Belfast.
Doug Sarney, their Brixx ( financial modelling ) supremo, hosting a session on "The dos and don'ts of financial modelling and stress testing". In essence, selling Brixx.

On 19th. June we were told :-
"Castleton has now exercised the Option to acquire the Licence (the "Acquisition") which enables Castleton to use, modify, maintain, distribute and sell the platform. Following the Acquisition, no further licence fees are payable to Brixx International Ltd leading to an increase in margin for the Group of approximately £0.3 million per annum in relation to sales of Castleton Strategic Modelling."

But Wates are there and M3.

Actually, Castleton not doing the maintenance conference any more - gone from their website and not on exhibitor list.
They're not doing all the exhibitions they used to attend. Homes 18 yesterday and today at Olympia but no Castleton. Perhaps content to mostly do their individual things.

Castleton seems to have formed a relationship with M3 Housing, Mitcham, which provides a combination of expertise in social housing, surveying and software design. M3 services the National Housing Maintenance Forum, which focuses on advising maintenance practitioners on good practice. M3 organises the NHMF maintenance conference - the biggest of its kind in the UK, which Castleton are attending on 22nd/23rd. January. Some of its own products link to the Castleton Brixx product. Yesterday Castleton presented at the M3 annual conference at The Institute of Directors, Pall Mall, giving a demo on Castleton Maintain integration with their tenant portal and M3 Central diagnostic software. They also addressed their recent work with ?Wates Group? Living Space ( making logging repairs easier for call centre staff and tenants ) with feedback from Wates ( local authority/housing association/public building property maintenance )
.

Part at least of the other side of FIL holding, shown by today's holdings RNS, with Kestrel decreasing as sort of thought.

An inevitable mention for CTP in Mxcp results out today, "The outcome today is a strong and successful company with excellent organic growth and cash conversion."
And Mr. Dickinson has proved a reliable and innovative CEO since taking over October 2016, following the majority of the acquisitions.

If we're told its Kestrel selling, it'll be no bad thing for more of theirs to start again, We know they been buying at 102 anyway. Cluid 'transformation' was announced go live yesterday by the way.

FIL bought yesterday's shares and now a brand new holder of 5.43% at this price. Yet to see the other side of that transference of shares.

Loads changing hands and starting again at ths price today.

Looking back James Massey also said, in relation to .Digital -

" It has enormous potential and we will be putting great force and energy into driving it forward. Castleton.DIGITAL is an absolute game-changer – not only for us, but for the social housing sector.”

This, from latest Housing Tech Mag is interesting. A contract for Castleton with Clanmil, N.Ireland, who are in fact a 4600 unit association, who followed it through development and waited for it rather than buy other suppliers' options. And they will be adding further solution(s). There are 800 - 1000 under 1000 unit associations not previously targeted by Castleton, and from this it appears it is also of interest to some of those occupying a middle ground.

CLANMIL SIGNS UP FOR CASTLETON’S COMMUNITY SOFTWARE
Castleton Technology has won a five-year contract with Clanmil Ireland to implement its latest cloud-based housing management system, Castleton Community.
Castleton said that its Community software is designed for housing providers with fewer than 1,000 properties who typically struggle with capacity issues as well as limited IT infrastructure investment.
Jimmy Rogers, sales and marketing director, Castleton Technology, said, “We have selected essential modules from our main suite of housing software and created ‘lite’ versions suitable for the needs of smaller housing providers. And while customers might start with this lite version of our solutions, Castleton Community is fully scalable to allow more modules to be added as and when needed.”
Michael Haynes, chief executive, Clanmil Ireland, said, “We reviewed the options on the market at a time when Castleton Community was in its development stages. We were keen to see the idea grow as it offers the ideal set of solutions for our growing organisation.
“We chose Castleton because of their established housing solution, which is well known in the housing sector. This, plus the launch of their Community software means it was a perfect fit for an organisation of our size.”
The first phase of Clanmil Ireland’s implementation will cover the main housing management system, Castleton EDRM lite and Agile lite (Castleton’s mobile working solution), with the second phase to include Castleton’s Financials software.
Haynes said, “Looking at our internal business case, we quickly realised that Castleton could give us an excellent return on investment and the solution will also let us transform our business to meet the challenges of a digital age.”

There's also separately a big piece in the magazine about Castleton .Digital, the new tenant facing solution, but nothing new there beyond what's been posted and on the website - but the punchline for customers and investors is "Nobody else is offering anything like this in the social housing sector. It’s a completely different take on the flat representations of data we’re used to, offeringering greater functionality, exibility and interactivity.”