TECH 100 Philip Brady told Business & Finance last year. “From an Irish perspective, last year [2014] we were the number one photography brand for volume and value,” said Brady. “Across the whole camera category, Canon grew its market share from 30% to over 40%. In the DLSR category, we increased market share from 52% to nearly 60% in value. This coupled, with our solutions, gives us the most comprehensive offerings to the market. “Given the presence of so many large multinationals in Ireland, it is important from a strategic position that Canon has a presence to service the needs of our global customers. Ireland has returned to being a growing market for Canon and we predict growth by 24% in the next three years.”
* CISCO Established in Ireland: 1999 Head of Irish operations: Adam Grennan, country manager One of the biggest names in networking, Cisco technology underpins an enormous chunk of the technology and traffic that businesses and consumers use every day. The company’s Irish setup consists of two locations: East Point in Dublin, handling sales/marketing/finance, and Oranmore in Co. Galway, where its unified communications R&D centre is based. The latter opened in 2007 and operates in the communication and collaboration software technology space, including enterprise and cloud-enabled desktop, mobile applications, desktop virtualisation and real-time web communications. Irish operations are headed up by Dublin-based veteran Adam Grennan, former head of technical strategy, who was appointed country manager for Cisco in Ireland in March 2012.
* CITRIX Established in Ireland: 1999
Bringing greetings cards into the 21st century at long last, the CleverCards app harnesses social media to create and send highly personalised greetings cards anywhere in the world. Based in Dublin’s Ranelagh, Cleverbug has an office in Silicon Valley and a printing and distribution network around the world, helping to cut down on delivery time. Headed up by seasoned media entrepreneur Kealan Lennon, funding drawn from Delta Partners, angel investors and Lennon himself has led to it being tipped as one of the highest-potential Irish start-ups in the tech space. The app has been featured on The Late Late Show, Newstalk and TV3, as well as tech giants CNET and Techcrunch. Last autumn, Cleverbug did a deal with Vodafone, whose customers will have exclusive access to CleverCards Complete. “Coining the term ‘gifting graph’, the company has built the largest social graph of closest friends and family for 450 million people around the world,” explained Lennon. “While there is immense commercial competition around the obvious, publicly known gifting dates, the gifting market for birthdays and anniversaries at $50bn annually, is larger than Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day combined. Mobile operators around the world increasingly understand how important rich, personalised content is to their strategies. We see Vodafone leading globally in this space, so Cleverbug is excited to enter into this strategic partnership.”
* COGNEX Established in Ireland: 2000 Head of Irish operations: Paul Eyre, director of ID Sales, Cognex Corporation With its headquarters in Massachusetts and offices in over 20 countries, Cognex designs, develops, manufactures and markets machine vision and industrial ID systems: devices that can ‘see’. Cognex barcode readers, machine vision sensors and machine vision systems are used in factories, warehouses and distribution centres around the world. They are important tools on production lines and in the supply chain, where they can detect defects, monitor production, guide assembly robots and track components. The company has sold over 900,000 visionbased products, over $3.5bn, since its foundation in 1981. Cognex’s Irish operations are based in Cork, a new facility that opened in 2008.
* COGNIZANT Established in Ireland: 2002 Head of Irish Operations: Garrett Synnott, general manager
Used by over 400,000 organisations and more than 100m users worldwide, Citrix offers a variety of workspace solutions, including application and desktop virtualisation, enterprise mobility management, file sync and sharing, cloud networking, collaboration and cloud services. The firm’s Dublin setup encompasses a number of business units including sales, global IT operations and a technical support team providing support to partners and users across the EMEA region. The East Point premises has also diversified to cover software development, online content, customer self-help technology, and product and programme activities. “Citrix has been able to find the right sort of talent here in Ireland to expand its business in markets across Europe, Middle East and Africa,” said IDA Ireland CEO Martin Shanahan, announcing new jobs in 2014.
Business process, IT and consulting company Cognizant has revenues of over $12m, recorded a revenue growth of 21% last year, and employs around a quarter of a million people. “Digital is driving a once-in-ageneration shift in how we live, work and play,” as the company explains. “It’s this shift that makes it possible – and necessary – for businesses to radically reshape how they interact and transact with customers and partners, seamlessly connecting the physical with the virtual. Companies that successfully navigate this shift are reimagining and reinventing their businesses, dramatically altering the decades-old – sometimes centuries-old – ways in which they serve their markets.” The New Jersey-headquartered, Nasdaq-listed firm has its Dublin office at Mount Street and is particularly active in banking and financial services, communications, consumer goods, education and utilities, healthcare and information services.
* CLEVERBUG Established in Ireland: 2011
* CONTINUUM Established in Ireland: 2002
Founder/CEO: Kealan Lennon
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CEO: Colin Meagle
Business & Finance September 2016
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