Scots businessman who has 70 billion secrets at his fingertips
Apr 8 2012 By Karen Bale
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/sc...6908-23818083/
HE is the multimillionaire whose website holds more secrets than WikiLeaks.
From the Lockerbie bombing to 9/11, Ian Campbell has more than 70billion documents relating to the world’s biggest legal cases at his fingertips.
Yet the Paisley-born businessman who created the groundbreaking technology cannot access them because he doesn’t have security clearance.
His IT firm iConect, a secure “mini-google” for legal firms, are currently working on more than 1000 cases and their biggest has 70billion pages. Around 40,000 people access his site at any one time.
The software, designed by Ian and his brother Neil, makes it possible for lawyers and businessmen to scan billions of documents for keywords in seconds.
Ian said: “We’ve worked on pretty much every major case in the world.
“We were involved in the Twin Towers, Hurricane Katrina, the Enron case, the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster and Lehman Brothers. The company has far exceeded my expectations.”
But with success comes stress. Ian has to deal with the world’s most powerful lawyers every day.
He said: “It’s stressful but this is the world we’ve chosen to be in. If I can’t print a document or my browser is being flaky, it can have a big impact. If somebody misses a court date or doesn’t have a document, you can lose billions of dollars.”
Ian lives in an 8000sq ft mansion in Ontario, Canada, with his partner Kelly, 50, and children Jordan, 20 and Nicole, 18.
The die-hard Scotland football fan is having three pitches built on land behind his home. For his last holiday he jetted to a private island in the Bahamas.
But he worked hard to get to where he is today. He was brought up in Garrowhill, Glasgow, by his dad George and mum May. In 1968 they emigrated to Canada, when Ian was seven.
He said: “My parents made such a sacrifice. They wanted to make a better life for us four kids.”
He graduated from Fanshawe College in Ontario with a degree in graphic design and by 23 he was running his own ad agency.
He said: “It was about 1984 and we were a graphics firm. Then they invented modern laser printers.
“They were so advanced, nobody needed our services any more. Our sales went through the floor.”
For seven years the firm limped on but finally they closed down.
Ian said: “I was 30 and my company had gone bankrupt. I felt so sad.”
But Ian believes his experience with Apex helped him succeed with iConect.
Tragically, his dad never lived to see the success he made of his next company. He died in 1994, five years before Ian established iConect. The following year his mum died of breast cancer.
Ian said: “They were only 62. It was a shock and immediately our roots to the old country were gone. Two years later, I got a lion rampant tattooed on my leg to remember the sacrifice my parents made.”
In 1999, Ian co-founded iConect with business partner Cynthia Williams.
He and his brother developed software that enabled law firms and business clients to store all their secure documents online – and be able to access them from anywhere in the world.
It was, at the time, revolutionary. Ian said: “It made it possible to check a billion documents in five seconds.”
Within months some of the biggest law firms in the world adopted it, quickly followed by the US government.
Ian said: “We were very lucky. We were in the right place at the right time. When Enron came in 2002, I flew to Houston and presented the technology to the judge.
“He announced he wanted everybody to use our product for the case. It meant 80 law firms and 320 lawyers were ordered to use iConect.
“They needed access to 153million pages of information. It was our big break.”
In 1999, the company had one office and one computer programmer. Thirteen years on, they have more than 60 staff in offices in Ontario, Washington DC and Los Angeles.
Ian said: “I was involved in training the judges in the Lockerbie trial.
“I trained them in Holland then did the appeal trial in Edinburgh.”
His firm also worked on hundreds of September 11 cases.
Ian said: “There were so many insurance claims. Not only was there tragic loss of life but loss of business assets and intelligence. Every firm in these towers made a claim.
“Then we worked for Nasa following the Columbia disaster in 2003 when seven astronauts died. They had three million technical documents from 80 experts around the world to look at.”
Recently, iConect have been involved in the Leveson Inquiry, helping to document thousands of audio files and cross-reference them to newspaper articles.
Their biggest current case is the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Ian said: “We’re dealing with all the people who are suing BP.”
Ian credits his dad with much of his success. He said: “He pushed me all the way. I might live in Canada but I’m Scottish and my parents’ love for Scotland is forever ingrained in me.”
