About
An IT company built inside a business that needed one
TradeSphere is the technology arm of Global Link Events. The systems we sell were built first for an events operation that could not run without them — which is a different starting point from an agency that has only ever built software for other people.
- Years building software
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- Projects delivered
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- Clients served
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- Countries worked in
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The story
Why an events group runs an IT company
Global Link Events has been running business events internationally for over a decade. Events are a logistics problem wearing a hospitality costume: thousands of delegates, sponsors and speakers, each with a contract, a schedule and a payment status, all of which change in the last fortnight.
No off-the-shelf system handled it, so the group built its own — a CRM, a delegate portal, an operations dashboard, and the integrations between them. That software is still in daily use, still maintained by the same people, and it is the reason this company exists.
Clients started asking who built it. TradeSphere is the answer to that question: the same team, now building websites, apps, internal tools and CRM systems for companies outside the group. Ten years of practice, and a parent business that is still our most demanding client.
Principles
Six things we will not trade away
Each of these is a promise we can actually keep, which is why the list is short and why there is nothing on it about passion.
Quote first, build second
Every project starts with a free discovery call and ends that stage with a written scope and one number. If we cannot describe what you are buying in a page, we do not understand it well enough to build it.
You own the code
Repository in your organisation, hosting in your accounts, domain in your name. There is no proprietary layer you have to keep paying us for, and no version of leaving that costs you the product.
Small team, direct line
You talk to the people writing the software. That is partly a service promise and mostly self-interest: a requirement loses something every time it is relayed, and we would rather hear it first-hand.
We will talk you out of things
A good part of this job is telling clients that the feature they asked for costs four weeks and will not move the number they care about. Saying so has cost us work. It has kept more.
Boring technology on purpose
We build on tools with long support horizons and large hiring pools, so that whoever maintains this in five years can. Novelty is a cost that clients pay for and rarely see.
Launch is the middle
Backups, monitoring, updates and someone who answers are part of the plan from the first call, not an upsell that arrives once the invoice is paid.
Where we are
Abu Dhabi, working European hours
Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates
Abu Dhabi is two hours ahead of Central European Time in winter and one in summer, so a normal working day here overlaps with almost all of one in Europe. Delivery is remote as standard — we quote in euro, invoice in euro, and are on a call at whatever hour suits your team, not ours.
- Office hours
- 9:00 – 19:00 GST
- Working days
- Mon – Fri
- Reply time
- 1 working day
Next step
Tell us what's broken.
A call, then a written brief and a fixed price. The brief is yours to keep whether or not you hire us.
Al Reem, Azure Tower, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Replies within one working day, GST.