IBM is to invest €22 million in its software research centre in Santry, Co Dublin.
The investment, supported by IDA Ireland, is part of IBM's strategy to gain a leading position in the "middleware" market. Middleware is software that enables one software application to communicate with another.
The Dublin laboratory will develop key components for the new IBM "Lotus Workplace", a software product designed to help customers collaborate more productively using a variety of integrated, server-managed functions for e-mail, instant messaging, document management and team collaboration.
Workplace will be supplied as a complete package and the customer will be able to select, switch on and pay for the applications as they require them.