Cisco unveils USD40m Irish investment

21-11-2006

by Maxim Kelly

Global network communications firm Cisco announced on Tuesday plans to build a USD40 million Research and Design centre in Ireland.

The US firm said it was looking at sites in Galway City and County for its new operation centre, where it intends to create 50 graduate jobs over the coming months, increasing to 200 positions over the next three years.

The new centre will concentrate on developing Cisco's next generation of Unified Communications services for businesses, and the necessary software engineering personnel required by the venture span graduate to PhD levels.

Making the jobs announcement in Dublin, Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment Micheal Martin said the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) had beaten out competition from around the world to attract Cisco to the west of Ireland, and that the company would collaborate with locally based existing high-tech research-driven industries, as well as academic bodies in the region.

"This investment is a superb win for Ireland, coming as it does from a truly global household name of the calibre of Cisco and involving R&D that will further push out the frontiers of global communications through the development of next-generation products and services," said the minister. "It is a further significant increase in the benchmark by which other global companies can judge Ireland's abilities to successfully support cutting-edge highly sophisticated technological R&D, and of our ability to provide the required numbers of the most knowledgeable and skilled graduates for today's global businesses."

Cisco's announcement comes hot on the heels of Google's creation of 500 new jobs in Dublin last week, as well as other recent IDA-assisted investments including French pharma firm Servier, Merck Sharp & Dohme, and Pepsi.

Minister Martin said these investments by multinationals in Ireland were the result of a long-term policy to support R&D, and were also a reflection of the ambitions of the Government's recent EUR3.8 billion initiative for Science and Technology.

Barry O'Sullivan, vice president of business communications at Cisco, said the main attraction of establishing a facility in the West was the talent pool of graduates available.

He said Cisco's Unified Comms division had grown 25 percent since last year and was "a significant contributor" to Cisco's overall productivity. "We're thinking beyond the initial investment to work with universities in the future. The technology we intend to research in Galway is leading edge, and is what all our engineers want to be working on."

Unified Communications is a method of integrating all of an individual's messages, including phone calls, faxes, e-mail, images and video data, into a single inbox. Cisco sees this as an attractive product for businesses, as an "intelligent network" will automatically route a caller to the swiftest method of contacting the desired individual in a company.

Cisco has a workforce numbering 51,000 globally, including 66 people in Dublin where the Californian company has an Irish sales operation, and a finance (captive leasing) and treasury office. Cisco also holds an Irish banking licence.

Cisco's president for European markets, Chris Dedicoat, said the Galway operation would surpass the size of similar operatuons in India, Denmark, Britain and the US when it was up and running. Cisco's largest R&D facility, in Israel, employs 500 staff.

"We're being realistic about final headcount because it depends on business success," he told reporters.

Galway Chamber chief executive Michael Coyle and current president David Niland both welcomed Cisco's proposed tie-up with local universities and the new jobs, especially as 380 high-tech jobs at US multinational American Power Conversion (APC) may be under threat in Galway and Mayo after the company was recently bought by Schneider Electric in France for USD6.1 billion.