Team

Albert E Sisto

Chief Executive Officer

Al’s an IT industry veteran with more than 25 years senior executive level experience. As Chief Operating Officer at RSA Data Security Inc., the leading security software company, he led its transformation from a passive patent licensing operation to an aggressive, sales oriented software company. At RSA he negotiated partnership agreements with IBM, Intel, Compaq, Cisco and Nortel. Al was Chairman, President and CEO of Phoenix Technologies Ltd, the global BIOS software company. He revitalised Phoenix through the acquisition of Internet appliance business, Ravisent Technologies; investing in semiconductor and microprocessor designer Transmeta and spinning off Silicon Corporation.

Ian C Ritchie CBE, FREng, FRSE, FBCS

Non-Executive Chairman

Ian Ritchie is the non-executive Chairman Computer Applications Service, and Krotos and completed his term of office as the Chairman of Iomart plc in August 2018. He founded OWL in 1984, which pioneered hypertext application development (a forerunner to the world wide web) selling the company to Panasonic in 1989. Since then he has been involved in over 40 start-up high-tech businesses.

Ian has a degree in Computer Science from Heriot-Watt University (1973) and holds Honorary Doctorates from Robert Gordons, Abertay, Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Universities.

He writes a monthly column in Scottish Business Insider magazine and his TED talk has been viewed over 500,000 times.

Sarah Payne

Finance Director

Sarah qualified with Ernst & Young as a Chartered Accountant before joining its corporate finance team. She then spent six years with the BBC, firstly within commercial and investment strategy and then as Head of Financial Planning and Analysis. For the seven years before joining Tern PLC, Sarah was an outsourced Finance Director for SME businesses principally within high tech markets.

Bruce Leith

Business Development Director

Bruce began his career with IBM and has extensive international sales management and board level experience in the software industry including senior level positions at DataWorks Corporation; London Bridge Software International and Codestream. Specialising in delivering high growth, high profit results through product development, portfolio repositioning and geographical expansion, Bruce was involved in the successful sale of a number of companies including Interactive UK; London Bridge and Codestream. Bruce is also an active angel investor in several high growth software businesses.

Alan Howarth

Non-Executive Director

Alan has extensive experience as a Chairman and Non-Executive Director of private and public companies. He is a specialist in building and selling technology businesses. Previously, Alan was a partner at Ernst & Young and is one of the founding partners of the EY Management Consulting practice in the UK. For the last fifteen years he has been managing a portfolio of non-executive appointments.

The Audit and Remuneration Committees are chaired by Alan. He invites parties to attend as required.

Sign up to our blog

Business leaders write the Tern PLC blog specifically for entrepreneurs and emerging business leaders in the cloud and IoT sectors. Why not join in the conversation and share your opinions and experiences.

Latest from our blog

Keeping IoT medical devices safe and secure

The potential of the IoT in the healthcare sector is vast. From wearable devices which can measure individuals’ vital health statistics and enable remote monitoring of their conditions, to major hospital equipment which can transmit and receive information, sharing health data dynamically across and between healthcare organisations, myriad applications are being developed.

Read blog >

Mesh technology explained

Home WiFi networks are under greater pressure than ever before. This time last year, the government estimatedthat every household in the UK owned at least 10 connected devices, and it has predicted that that figure will rise to 15 by 2020, thanks to the ever-growing Internet of Things (IoT). Meanwhile, high-resolution gaming and video streaming mean that even established connected devices – computers, tablets, connected TVs and smartphones – require more bandwidth than in the past.