An Irish start-up company has secured £1 million (€1.27 million) funding, even though its first product is still only at the trial stage. Macalla Software, which has been operating since last June, said it has received an initial round of funding from two venture capital firms, 3i Group - a leading European venture capital firm - and the Irish-based, Guinness Ulster Bank Equity Fund.
Macalla was set up by six ex-employees of CSK Software, formerly Quay Financial Services, the banking technology venture owned by entrepreneur Mr Dermot Desmond. Its chief executive officer, Mr Niall O Cleirigh, was chief technical architect at CSK.
While at CSK, he was responsible for developing Slingshot, a product which allows financial institutions distribute data across the Internet in real time.
Macalla plans to exploit the opportunities presented by the development of open standards based middle-ware, which allows different systems within an organisation to communicate and operate seamlessly. It will specialise in developing CORBA-based financial frameworks for trading and investment banking.
The product range will be called Echo, and Macalla says it will allow the development and deployment of high performance, secure, real time information to a range of users not previously able to avail of such data. This opens up opportunities for banks or investment houses who want to push their information into an extended trading environment.
A handful of British and Irish-based companies are currently running pilot schemes to test the software. They include financial institutions, systems integrators and independent software vendors. Macalla will develop its product range for deployment through all of these channels, and it says it expects to have at least five or six installations in place by the end of this year.
The practice of backing software ventures before product delivery is largely a Silicon Valley phenomenon. There, early investments tend to be based on the personalities involved and their proven track records elsewhere. All of Macalla's personnel come from a trading room technology environment, and have good experience of the technology involved and the best route to market.
According to Mr Bryan Maybury, Macalla's vice-president of business development, the company was approached by a number of private investors initially.
"But we wanted backers on board that are well known on the global stage. Most US companies are judged on the calibre of their investors." Macalla then used corporate financiers, Chapman Flood Mazars to present their business plan to potential venture capital investors, and it returned with 3i, and Guinness Ulster Bank Equity Fund, which is managed by NCB Ventures.
Mr O Cleirigh says the investment will now allow Macalla to build its team, accelerate its development activities and market its products in the Republic and internationally. Initial target markets will be the Republic, London, New York and companies with sophisticated banking systems throughout Europe.
"We would envisage employing around 25 people in Dublin in the next 12 to 18 months. And in London, we have already started looking around for sales people." Macalla, and early versions of the Echo product have already been well received within the industry. Last month, Mr O Cleirigh was invited to present at Iona World in San Francisco. Iona Technologies is a major Irish software success story and a leader in the international middle-ware market.
