About · The name
Why Saint Michael
Most software companies are named after a word that tested well. Ours is named after a standard. Saint Michael is the patron saint of protection, and of those whose work is to protect other people. That is what we want to be measured against.
The one who stands in front
He is almost always shown the same way. Armoured, sword raised, wings out, standing over something dangerous that is no longer able to move. What matters in the image is not the fight. It is the position he has taken up. He is between the danger and everyone behind him.
Michael's strength is never presented as his own achievement. It exists because he serves something higher than himself. In Christian belief, he is God's defender, acting not from a desire for power but from obedience to truth and the protection of those entrusted to his care. That distinction matters.
Protection. Courage. Duty. Built for those who stand between danger and the mission.
At times of great need
As an archangel he is also the one described as arriving at times of great need, which is the other half of why the name fits. Protection is not a thing you provide on an ordinary day and withdraw on a difficult one. It is only worth anything at the moment something has gone wrong.
We build software for people who carry that kind of responsibility themselves. Residential communities holding personal information about where people live. Councils and regional organisations answerable to the public. Farmers and small businesses whose work does not pause because a system is unavailable. In every case somebody has handed us something that matters to them, and the cost of us getting it wrong is paid by them rather than by us.
Power without purpose becomes tyranny. Strength in service of God becomes protection.
What the name commits us to
A name is easy to choose and harder to live up to, so it is worth writing down what we think it obliges us to do. These are the three we hold ourselves to.
Protection
Security and privacy are not a feature list bolted to something else we sell. Take the protective work out of one of our products and there is no product left. That is the test we apply when a deadline and a control are in conflict.
Courage
The harder half. Telling a customer plainly what our software does not do. Raising a problem before anyone has thought to ask about it. Declining work we cannot yet do safely, and saying why, rather than taking it and hoping.
Duty
Owed to the person whose information we hold, not only to the organisation that signed the agreement. Nearly always those are the same interest. On the rare occasion they are not, the person comes first.
The mark
The shield in our badge is his. It carries the cross of Saint Michael, the same one on the shield in the relief above, and it is the mark that appears at the top of every page of this site and on everything we build. It is a shield rather than a monogram or an abstract logo, and that was deliberate. A shield says what the company is for. It was chosen because the idea Saint Michael carries, standing between people and harm, is a plain description of our work.
Hold us to it
Naming a company after the patron saint of protection sets a bar in public, which is the point of doing it. If our software ever fails to meet it, we would rather hear that from you directly than have you work around it quietly. You will reach the person who wrote the software, because that is who answers.