An American firm is investing more than £400,000 sterling setting up a Northern Ireland operation because of what it says is the excellence of local software skills.
The Seattle-based company Webforia plans to create 44 jobs and to spend an additional £2.5 million over the next three years in establishing a new subsidiary company.
The company's Ulster-born co-founder, Mr Brian Cassidy, who is a graduate of Queen's University, set up Webforia last year with his partner Mr Mike Kennewick. It currently employs 35 people at its premises in Washington.
"Our greatest resource is people," Mr Cassidy said, "and in Northern Ireland we know that we have access to quality people. We are confident that the products we develop will become market leaders, and we are pleased to draw from the wealth of talented and experienced software developers here to assist us in achieving that objective."
The project is being supported by a grant of more than £200,000 from the IDB. The agency's chief executive, Mr Bruce Robinson, said that Webforia was a fast-growing company which had already established a strong reputation in the software sector. "Already they have eight people on board," he said, "and they will be moving to new office space in Belfast's Ormeau Road in a matter of weeks."
It is expected that the Webforia operation will create more than 40 new jobs over the next three years.
The Tyrone-born entrepreneur has been involved in a number of highly successful ventures over a 30-year period. A maths graduate from Queen's University in Belfast in 1969, he was a mathematician on the team that developed Tagamet, the billion-dollar ulcer treatment drug.
Later, he became one of the pioneers of SQL database language, and secured the franchise for the establishment of Oracle in Europe and the Middle East. He was also a 22 per cent shareholder and vicepresident of Saros Corporation, a leading document management vendor, which sold for $130 million in 1996.
In 1997 he established Live Content - the company which is establishing the Webforia subsidiary. The Seattle-based company specialises in information management software on the Internet, and its products are designed for people using the Internet as a research vehicle.
In May, members of Northern Ireland's Industrial Development Board travelled to Seattle to conduct due diligence on the organisation in advance of this investment.
