Welcome to the Business & Finance Tech 100 listing, a definitive guide to the top performing tech companies across the island of Ireland.
Although global organisations feature predominantly on the list, so too do Irish tech firms who are showing continued growth and expansion both nationally and internationally.
Multinationals continue to deliver on employment numbers, but so too do emerging Irish enterprises. More than 18,000 new jobs were created by SMEs in 2013 — the highest net gain for Irish companies in the last decade and an indication of strong export performance.
Major investments where announced by a number of Irish enterprises in the last 12 months and indigenous and MNC firms are collaborating on a more pronounced level with noticeable mutual benefit. This is evidenced by the number of Irish companies acquired by MNCs in the last year. Dublin-based software firm, The Now Factory, which boasts customers in more than 29 countries, was acquired by IBM. Social news agency Storyful sold to News Corp. for €18m and Mapflow, a geographic risk assessment technology company established in Dublin, was acquired by LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
According to Enterprise Ireland, these leading Irish tech players are expected to continue to grow substantially in the future, helping to retain and embed existing MNCs further in Irish business and at the same time attracting new ones.
That Ireland was named the best country to invest in Western Europe is further recognition of the strength and growth potential across the Irish tech landscape. The significant opportunities being generated and the contribution and commitment that the top tech companies have made to the Irish economy, is a clear indication of the strength and performance across Ireland’s innovation landscape. The pace of Ireland’s growing tech industry is phenomenals and Ireland is considered the fastest growing country in Europe for data centre operators. US tech giants alone invested more than $130bn into Ireland between 2008 and 2012. To put that into context, that is the same level of investment in the tech industry in all of Asia.
Further reinforcement of the growth, potential and future of Ireland’s tech industry is evidenced by the level of investment and job creation from global tech giants.
Earlier this year, Intel announced its ongoing expansion at its Leixlip facility with a $5bn campus upgrade. This is the largest private investment in the history of the Irish State.
This investment will see 5,000 indirect jobs created throughout the construction phase until 2015, and will also sustain the 4,500 existing jobs at the Leixlip facility, with the potential to grow that further.
But its not just international giants such as Google, Facebook, Intel, Twitter and PayPal that are investing in Ireland’s tech future. So far this year, job announcements across the tech industry have been extremely strong and indigenous companies have also predicted major expansion in 2014.
According to AIB’s Outlook Report seven out of 10 indigenous tech companies increased their turnover by an average of 30% last year and six out of 10 are now looking outside Ireland for their main market.
As well as having a strong multinational presence in Ireland, there is a scaling indigenous tech sector worth €2bn in annual sales and employs 30,000 people in the emerging start-up ecosystem that has evolved across the country.
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