Interview With Omnitude Founder & CEO Chris Painter

Hey everyone, today we would to share with you an interview with the founder and CEO of middleware ecosystem project Omnitude, Chris Painter. ICO Wingman is an ICO and Rating platform that make’s the ICO evaluation process both seamless and transparent like never before. The platform offers a completely new way to clearly evaluate the latest ICO projects with community and expert reviews from only the top industry authorities. Enjoy!

Tell our readers some background about yourself?

I live and work in Worthing, Sussex, very near Brighton and I’ve been in the tech industry for 14 years. I founded Pixel by Pixel in a garage, and grew it into an enterprise eCommerce digital agency working with some of the biggest brands in the world. £67 million worth of transactions go through the systems we’ve built and manage every single year. My team and I have spent the last 10 years grappling with the thorny issues of system integration, security and ease of use which gives us ideal experience and insight when it now comes to the world of blockchain integration with enterprises.

How did the idea of Omnitude come to be?

When I saw that crypto (and specifically Blockchain technology) was becoming something that could no longer be ignored, I came up with the idea for the Omnitude ecosystem, drawing on my experience with clients we’ve dealt with at Pixel. I then drew up the initial whitepapers, assembled a team and founded the company. That was a year ago.

On the way, we have attracted and accrued some of the best real world talent across a whole range of disciplines helping us create and achieve a broad vision for the business. That vision is to drive the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology in enterprise large and small through the establishment of our plug and play blockchain ecosystem.

Blockchain and supply chain systems seem to go hand-in-hand. What makes Omnitude’s platform and approach unique?

You’re right, they do. Blockchain technology is the perfect match for supply chains because it offers transparency, security, scalability and speed. But not just any blockchain. We’ve specifically chosen to build the Omnitude ecosystem on the Hyperledger Fabric framework specifically for these reasons.

Omnitude is not a single solution blockchain application — it’s a middleware blockchain layer that allows businesses to integrate the benefits of blockchain technology into the commercial fabric of their organisations easily and cost efficiently. Think of Omnitude as the glue that binds enterprise systems, supply chains and eCommerce platforms to the blockchain.

We’re building a business ecosystem comprising merchants, suppliers, couriers and other parties throughout the supply chain that want to realise the benefits of the Omnitude platform.

Currently the technology infrastructure and applications that enable the ecosystem are taking shape and we’ll also be providing open documentation, example code and support so that technology companies can build innovative new applications and integrate their systems (for example ERP, WMS, DXPs or CRM) with the Omnitude platform.

Business appear to stand to benefit greatly from the usage of the platform. How has the reception been amongst some of those businesses thus far?

We’ve been met with excitement and lots of interest around what we have to offer because the benefits are so appealing. We all know how long it can take to integrate various systems across an enterprise so that we have one view of the supply chain or customer. With Omnitude providing the middleware layer to allow various systems (WMS, ERP etc) to talk directly to the blockchain, we take away that hassle for months of integration work and the cost associated with that.

Our clients, like Williams Martini Racing, high end catering company Absolute Taste and the Government of Malta’s transport ministry are seeing the immediate benefits of working with our experienced team.

Your team had a successful conclusion to your ICO. How did it go?

It was an exciting and interesting time. The market was particularly bearish, which was a challenge, but we’ve built up tremendous support within our community, which kept our spirits up. And our community understands our vision, which helps a lot. We managed to raise over $12 million for the development of the platform and we’re still giving away $5 million worth of ECOM (our token) in an airdrop, as a thank you to all of the small investors that we attracted.

What are your team’s plans now that the raise is complete?

We’re hard at work building Omnitude Core, the underlying architecture and platform that will accommodate key applications like Omnitude ID, our single sign-on product as well as other multi-enterprise applications. Think of Omnitude Core as the foundation that underpins all the applications that sit on top of it.

The beauty of Hyperledger means that the suite of tools and components within it allow us to combine them in unique ways and enable full platform functionality of Omnitude Core and Hyperledger Fabric blockchain enables true multi-enterprise applications. So we’re not just talking about integration with an enterprise, but integration between enterprises. And that’s the beauty of Omnitude. We’re building that middleware layer, so that multi-enterprise applications can be built and threaded together and integrated into enterprises. And that’s a challenge too, but one we gladly accept. We’re taking on the headaches and challenges so our clients and users don’t have to.

What lessons or knowledge has your team learned throughout the ICO process?

We have learnt that we are not a typical Crypto business with a whole economy based around token value. We are a blockchain technology business that through ICO have managed to crowdfund and accelerate our routes to market. We have several economic models that will benefit both the business and our participants. We didn’t pursue hype, we didn’t give huge discounts to VC funds, and we have always been transparent. Those lessons are the ones we will be taking forward. We have huge respect for our community and are humble enough to know that without them we wouldn’t be here.

It looks like the hard cap was reduced and an airdrop was initiated. Can you tell us more about that?

We made the decision to airdrop $5m of ECOM tokens to all participants of the token sale (with purchased tokens), shared amongst all purchased token holders by percentage split of ownership. As an example, if you owned 10% of all purchase tokens, you would get 10% of the airdrop. The airdrop does not apply to bounty, referral or any other previous bonus allocations.

In order to ensure we have consistent growth on the token value, we will be airdropping in 4 stages. We launch stage 2 of the airdrop on Monday 3rd September 2018 and there are two more releases — one in the first week of October and then first week of November.

What would you tell your community now that the ICO portion of the project is complete?

We are hard at work delivering on the promised roadmap, building Omnitude Core and Omnitude ID, two key components of the roadmap. With these products in place, we are driving business development forward for the platform across Europe and now the USA, where we’ve recently opened an office in Austin, TX, the blockchain startup hub of the United States.

Is there a personal quote that you live or work by?

Not really… our ethos is that of the technology we are dealing with, open, transparent, trusted, secure and immutable. Anything else wouldn’t make sense to us.

To find out more about Omnitude, you can visit their website and be sure to check them out on their social channels: LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Telegram Medium Reddit

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