A new technology firm, Epionet, has secured £2 million (€2.54 million) in seed funding and will introduce a Web development and deployment system next week at Expo 2001 in Dublin.

The technology platform, called EpioRADD, is designed to make the task of creating and deploying Web services easier and more efficient.

A Web service is a single piece of software which, when activated, performs a specific task and returns a specific result. This could be retrieving sales information or calling up project details.

The EpioRADD system, which was completed in December, is browser-based and incorporates multi-applications such as Powerpoint, Microsoft Word and Excel.

According to Mr Steven Brogan, chief executive of Epionet, the system exploits the advances of the recently announced Microsoft.Net initiative, which provides the necessary infrastructure for it to work.

"The development enables a community of users and developers to access innovations in the development of applications. Therefore, an innovation can be duplicated or copied immediately," he said.

As well as creating the platform upon which Web developers can create applications, Epionet has developed a sales management application and a project management system.

"These applications will help us sell the platform and we are developing more," said Mr Brogan. "Our target audience is the US and we hope to start selling after our launch next week."

A Gartner Group report on the Epionet solution, which was commissioned by the new investors in the firm, said the system "hit a number of very hot buttons in the e-business arena".

The investment was supplied from a range of private investors and the Alliance Fund, which includes the venture capital arm of the Royal Bank of Scotland and Enterprise Ireland.

The two founders of Epionet, chief technology officer Mr Liam MacMahon and Mr Brogan, retain a 90 per cent stake in the firm.