THE IRISH operations of OpSource, formed following the all-share acquisition of billing software firm LaCayla last year, are set to triple in size following the successful roll-out of a new product for its parent.

The Dublin office led development of the recently launched OpSource Cloud, a software application which allows customers to secure and manage their own platform for internet applications.

“Halfway through development, we got rid of the US and Indian developers and hired more Irish ones,” said Treb Ryan, chief executive and co-founder of OpSource.

“In California, everyone wants to do the next big thing, but here [in Ireland] people stay focused on achieving their goals.”

Mr Ryan also said Irish developers were “far better at producing working code” compared to their US counterparts.

The Irish team use techniques such as programming in pairs, ensuring code is checked by a peer before being submitted.

“There’s a general belief that you can’t get US programmers to work in pairs – they see themselves as artists,” Mr Ryan said.

OpSource has 12 programmers in Dublin, but Mr Ryan added that the company would take advantage of the numbers of talented staff who were either unemployed or under-employed to expand.

He said the biggest challenge of having development based in Dublin was the time difference with the US.

To date, OpSource, which has been backed by $65 million (€43.3 million) in venture capital, has primarily focused on providing servers and other networking infrastructure. LaCayla had specialised in billing software, which was a feature OpSource lacked.