The techy carnival is coming to town with TechCrunch and its ‘digital power broker’ Mike Butcher, hooking up with Informatics Ventures for Engage | Invest | Exploit 10 in Edinburgh on 12 May 2010.

This is the first TechCrunch Europe UK event to be held outside of London and its programme has attracted a prestigious line up of speakers and a powerful delegate list of the great and good from Scotland’s tech community.

Informatics Ventures is based in Edinburgh University’s School of Informatics and Engage | Invest | Exploit 10 is its third annual showcase of the most promising, high-growth companies spun out of leading Scottish Universities.

This year’s event will be the biggest to date with an exhibition of 50 start-ups and spin-outs from bio tech, clean tech, social media, gaming and mobile all in one place and in one morning. EIE is Scotland’s biggest opportunity for Informatics entrepreneurs and investors to meet.

During the TechCrunch afternoon sessions, Skyscanner’s Lara Bayley will be presenting on “Why Scotland for Startups?”; followed by fast pitches from some early stage local startups. A panel of entrepreneurs with Adtaily, Onedrum and Cloudsoft will discuss linking Scotland to Europe.

Andrew Nutter looks at “How to turn on an investor”; Rapid Mobile will cover “Mobile innovation in Scotland and finally a panel of investors will discuss “Investing in Tech startups in and beyond Scotland.”

We’ve done a roll call of Hot Tin Roof clients who are attending and we are almost at a 100% hit rate with MoneyDashboard, FreeAgent Central, EdgeCase, Flexiant, Civic and Informatics Ventures (naturally) all signed up. And of course, there’s no show without punch, so we’ll be there too!

Don’t worry – if you haven’t got your tickets yet – it’s not too late – just click here.

Hot Tin Roof is feeling exceptionally wise this week.

Or at least we should be, considering that four very angry wisdom teeth caused Lucy’s face to swell to twice its usual size. We’d post a photograph but, quite frankly, it would put you off your dinner.

Despite an increasing reliance on Superdrug’s finest painkillers, the past fortnight has been a busy one.

We took a trip down to Port Seton to launch the programme for the 3 Harbours Seafood Festival. The delicious mussels and langoustines served steaming beside the sea were a perfect start to the day (pictured).

The photocall was a great success and we enjoyed the fish puns used by the Edinburgh Evening News in their coverage of our launch.

We were also pleased to discover that Scottish investors consider cloud computing and SaaS as the top IT businesses to invest in.

Flexiant’s Tony Lucas told The Scotsman why he thinks the market for cloud (and not just the one made of ash) is going to grow and grow.

Our favourite personal finance experts, Money Dashboard, also announced that the appointments of Andy Laing and Laurie Dempster to the team. We got straight on the phones and the story was covered in The Scotsman, City AM and Business 7.

And on our headphones this week: Volume Two by the delightfully poppy She & Him.

Tony Lucas, founder of Flexiant

Flexiant, the software and services company, was officially launched today following the completion of a funding round, raising approximately £1m. The funding round, which was over-subscribed, has allowed Flexiant to acquire Flexiscale, a cloud computing technology developed by XCalibre Communications Ltd, and provided Flexiant with working capital to further develop the technology.

Flexiant’s suite of software and services is designed for web hosting businesses, data centre operators, and telecoms companies, enabling them to offer cloud computing based services to their customers. Flexiscale’s origins are in the web hosting sector, having been developed by XCalibre in order to provide a flexible and highly cost effective service to its own customer base.

Flexiant will also continue to market the Flexiscale public cloud service which has been running for two years and has an established user base. Flexiant expects to announce a major software release early this year.

A group of ten angel investors have come together to back Flexiant. The group includes two Internet pioneers, Alex Bligh co-founder of Nominet UK and Laurence Blackall, behind the creation of Pipex Communications, as well as cloud computing trailblazer and software guru Tony Lucas, founder of XCalibre and architect of the Flexiscale platform. Lucas will be joined on the management team by Blackall as Chairman and by Bligh as CEO. The team thus has not just an outstanding pedigree but also a very real understanding of the market.

Flexiant will be in a powerful position to revolutionise the hosting market by allowing hosting providers to offer highly scalable services at realistic prices. Servers provided using Flexiscale technology can be provisioned or removed within seconds instead of days or weeks. Spare resources can be shared between servers with a corresponding drastic reduction in capital investment. The resultant reduced power consumption allows hosting companies to slash their operating costs and reduce their carbon footprint, whilst being able to invoice their customers earlier.

Alex Bligh comments: “Flexiscale is the most exciting internet infrastructure technology I have seen for ten years. Flexiant’s recently completed funding round will allow us to exploit the full potential of Flexiscale by licensing it to the web hosting market. Tony Lucas has pioneered cloud computing for the past five years and I believe that we have pulled together the right team to change forever the technology used for internet hosting.”

Tony Lucas explains: “I believe the next decade will see profound changes in the hosting market with affordable scalable services reducing both operating costs and carbon footprint. The success of Flexiscale to date means that we are in a strong position to lead the way as the sector evolves and I am looking forward to the challenges ahead.”

Web hosting specialist, Webfusion, has acquired the hosting assets of XCalibre Communications to strengthen its entry level managed hosting business. The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, will enable Webfusion to extend its offering and provide XCalibre customers with access to a variety of products, along with 24×7 support.

The remaining XCalibre business will transfer to Flexiant Ltd. Webfusion, in partnership with Flexiant, will trial the FlexiScale cloud computing platform and it is hoped that FlexiScale will eventually be offered as a service to Webfusion customers.

Thomas Vollrath, Managing Director of Webfusion, comments, “XCalibre has an excellent portfolio of hosting products and we are delighted to partner with them. The acquired Xcalibre customer base will benefit from an increased product set and more choice in entry level managed hosting packages. We look forward to the opportunities to widen our portfolio and present these customers with a greater choice of hosting and web security solutions.”

Tony Lucas, CEO of XCalibre, comments: “This partnership with Webfusion is very important to us and will allow us to strengthen our focus on the continued development of FlexiScale platform and other software products. Our roots are in hosting but our passion is development and going forward this experience will shape our transition into and growth as a software and services company, pioneering cloud computing.”

Customers of XCalibre Communications will become clients of Webfusion with immediate effect. There will not be any changes to control panels or services provided. In addition, customers will benefit from Webfusion’s UK-based data centre, round the clock support teams and access to a wider range of products and services.

Webfusion is part of the Host Europe Group, which is owned by Oakley Capital.