Former Informatica chief executive pitches up in London's East End

In November 2010 David Cameron announced his intention to try to turn the East End of London into a tech hub that would recreate the innovation and creativity of Silicon Valley.

The choice of location recognised the growing importance that the area, dubbed by many as "Silicon Roundabout", is having on the UK's technology start-up agenda.

Cameron will no doubt be pleased to know that one Silicon Valley hot shot has heeded his words and chosen the area as the European base for his next venture.

Gaurav Dhillon, the former chief executive of data integration giant Informatica, has just announced the opening of offices for his new company SnapLogic in Shoreditch, and explained why when V3.co.uk caught up with him.

"We did some research and felt it was a good place to be. There are a lot of tech 2.0 companies there and there's a vibrant atmosphere that comes with the energy of disruption when you're using the web to address new challenges," he says.

This "energy of disruption" is something Dhillion believes SnapLogic is bringing to the party by providing the ability for firms to connect cloud computing applications together without having to write reams of complex code for each one.

Instead, it provides a neutral platform on which the applications are linked together by 'Snaps' that are developed by third-parties to support either common business applications or their own on-premise systems. Dhillion likens the model to that of the iPhone.

Following the iPhone model

"I was thinking about business integration for a while and I saw we could offer the whole product like the iPhone with hardware, software and applications, and in doing so disrupt the integration space more than has been done in the past," he says.

"The SnapLogic server is like the iPhone while the 'Snaps' are like applications that offer the ability to store information that can then be accessed when relevant."

To complete the metaphor he explains that the firm's SnapStore is akin to the App Store in that it allows developers to create applications for any web-based services and then charge for them, taking a 70 per cent revenue cut.

"We can't build the Snaps ourselves, or maintain them, so it makes much more sense to have the Snaps built by a third-party and give them an incentive to sell that in the SnapStore," he says.

The SnapStore is already populated by applications for tools such as Google Analytics, Netsuite, Oracle, Salesforce, Twitter and even YouTube.