IBM's European Innovation and Venture Capital Centre has been an unexpected boon for Irish companies.
When IBM announced the centre in Dublin last September, there was some puzzlement in the sector. IBM doesn't directly invest in new companies so what was the role of this centre? Even prominent venture capitalists at the launch admitted they had scant information on what IBM was trying to achieve. But following the kick-off of the centre last week at an event in Dublin, Irish technology companies are already reporting positive benefits from partnering with IBM and the advantages of having a local centre that can facilitate that.
Working with large global corporations can be fraught with difficulty for start-ups. There is the initial difficulty of identifying the correct executive who can help, and once the two sides start working together there is always the worry that corporate giants may take the smaller company's ideas and implement them themselves.
IBM is trying to address these issues with a network of centres around the globe. The Dublin kick-off focused on three key areas of interest for IBM - healthcare, telecoms and digital media. Working closely with Enterprise Ireland, more than 70 firms from these sectors came to hear how they could partner with IBM.
Malachy Harkin, chief executive of Vimio, which enables the reception of live television on mobile phones, said as a result of the event, his company had been invited to make use of a private 3G phone network that IBM uses for testing in Montpellier, France.
"The fact that I can beta test on a live network is huge for me," said Mr Harkin. "You can do a lot of testing in a software environment but it can never be 100 per cent on day one. Emulation will get you 99 per cent but you need to be on a network to get the final one per cent."
The invitation to Vimio was extended by Sandy Aitken, a partner in IBM's global telecommunications industry division. Gerry McKenna, chief executive of telecom software firm Anam, said the presence of a senior executive like Mr Aitken at the event gave him confidence that his company would be able to leverage IBM's partner programme to get access to network operators who buy Anam's software.
