DUBLIN SOFTWARE firm Vordel made a profit of almost €400,000 last year and is on target to double its profits and revenues for this calendar year on the back of strong sales growth.
The company made a gross profit of €393,059 last year according to its latest set of abridged accounts, although the figures do not reveal the company’s revenues.
Vordel’s software acts as the glue that allows applications built on different systems to communicate securely with one another. This is also known as service-oriented architecture (SOA) and is one of the technologies that underpins cloud computing, which is currently the biggest technology trend.
Chief executive Vic Morris Vordel is well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities as more businesses begin to use cloud computing. The firm’s 2010 revenues and profits are on course to double and similar growth is anticipated for next year, he said. Vordel employs 50 people, up from 22 in 2009. Morris said he expected to employ 80 people by the end of 2011.
Vordel has been around since the dotcom days of 1999 and was originally, said Morris, very much “a bubble company”. The business was restructured in 2003 to focus on SOA security.
It has more than 140 customers worldwide including Allianz’s Irish operation, the Dutch power utility Essent, Fortis, BNP Paribas and Barclays banks, Mazda, the European Council and the US Department of Immigration. Morris said 80 per cent of growth would be from new customers, with the remainder coming from maintenance contracts which provide recurring revenues.
Vordel supported its product development through earlier funding rounds from Enterprise Ireland, Intel Capital and other venture capital firms. Morris said the company made a conscious decision not to expand hastily in anticipation of demand.
“When you’re a small company you can be vulnerable. We were frankly very cautious up until two years ago.”
Growth will now be funded from the business and the company is not seeking further investment, he said.
All product development, marketing and back office functions are carried out from Vordel’s headquarters in Dublin. The company has offices in London, Paris, Düsseldorf, Washington and Boston. A third US office is planned for next year.
Vordel also sells through representatives in South America and Australia and it has partnership agreements with several leading tech firms including CA, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. Dell manufactures a hardware version of Vordel’s Cloud Security Broker product.
At home, the company is a co-founder of Infosecurity Ireland, an Enterprise Ireland-backed initiative which aims to position Ireland as a hub for innovation and development in IT security.
Globally, Vordel faces a challenge to stand out in what is fast becoming a crowded market. Cloud computing is the current darling of the tech sector and many leading IT firms are making acquisitions in this area. However, Morris said Vordel was not scouting for buyers.
Instead, he plans to “potentially go public”. No target date has been set yet, and Morris said flotation would be subject to maintaining growth over several consecutive quarters.
