With the sale of its PKI (public key infrastructure) business, Baltimore has lost its personality, its core business, and the segment which drove its profile and its market capitalisation during the technology boom years.

What's left is a shell, holding together a few disparate pieces of a company that once was one of the State's highest corporate fliers.

Led flamboyantly for five years by business leader (and now Football Association of Ireland chief) Mr Fran Rooney, Baltimore at its height had a greater market value - at an extraordinary £7.5 billion sterling - than the Bank of Ireland.

But, like many internet and technology sectors, the security industry didn't develop quite as planned - especially not after the withering of the markets in 2000, though security was still touted as one of the growth areas for technology.

And Baltimore, the flashy Ferrari that zoomed up out of nowhere to pace the rather staid, sturdy Volvos of the security scene, gradually shrank into quiet near-obscurity.

Still, the sale of its PKI business for €5 million has startled many industry watchers, who remember when the abbreviation PKI was the mantra of the security sector and its expected widespread adoption was a major part of Baltimore's high-shooting business plan.

In tech, PKI was hot, hot hot. Its basis is public key encryption, a technology which uses complex mathematical "keys" to encode and decode data, making it nearly impossible to unscramble information kept in computers or sent over the internet.

PKI is the term for the overall network of public-key technology products and users, and the "certification authorities" needed to verify the identity of encryption users.

Baltimore didn't arrive on the scene fully formed, however. The Dublin company was actually established in the mid 1970s by Trinity College lecturer Mr Michael Purser, and went through several incarnations.

In 1996, Baltimore, a six-person consultancy firm in the area of network security with a revenue stream of £50,000, had caught the eye of businessman Mr Dermot Desmond, who felt the company had potential.

Mr Rooney was working with Mr Desmond (after stints in the civil service, then as a computer systems analyst and programmer) where he'd worked for a Desmond company, Quay Financial Software.

Both Mr Desmond and Mr Rooney put financial backing into Baltimore and Mr Rooney stepped in as chief executive.

The company developed swagger and style, quickly creating a name for itself at leading industry events, such as the annual RSA Data Security Conference in California.

Famously, the entire small staff went out to its first RSA to beef out the stand and make the company appear much larger than it was.

Employees were entrusted with buying their limit of duty- free alcohol plus a tape of traditional music to woo clients at their all important corporate party.

Baltimore gamely tackled industry giants such as RSA, CertCo, Entrust and VeriSign - companies that had been in the security technologies sector for years and had well-established brand identity.

It clinched high profile deals, and started acquiring companies, though still not turning a profit in the crazy boom markets.

A reverse takeover of British competitor Zergo swelled its ranks. But not long after, the economy began to crumble, along with Baltimore's fortunes.

After a roller-coaster of negative analyst reports, falling sales, and lay-offs, Mr Rooney stepped down from leadership of the company.

Its current CEO, Mr Bijan Khezri, was a board member who came into Baltimore with the Zergo purchase. His focus has been on slimming the company, both through lay-offs and by selling off its constituent parts.

Now, observers say Baltimore is more a holding company, with €20 million or more realised from selling off assets.

Some wonder whither next, now that it is no longer a PKI security company. Conceivably, it could really become a holding company seeking investments.

But really, Baltimore is no longer Baltimore. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice in Wonderland said.

But appropriately so for Baltimore, the company that grew enormous, then suddenly shrank small, and did astonishing things.