100 jobs from €25m IBM investment

IBM yesterday announced a €25 million investment in its Irish software engineering division, which will create 100 jobs in Dublin, Cork and Galway.

The investment, backed by the IDA, will be over three years and will allow the engineers to focus on designing “enterprise cloud computing software”, software to better manage IT systems and databases that support business analysis.

“Today’s announcement highlights Ireland as an important place to help fulfil our global research, development and business strategy,” said Michael Daly, IBM Ireland general manager.

“The software will be standardised and customised by customer demands.”

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said: “This is wonderful news coming from the largest information technology company in the world. This knowledge-driven investment is highly significant for Ireland.

“The benefits are tremendous in terms of the highly sophisticated software technology that will be developed, the highly skilled positions that will be created and the endorsement by a world industry leader that Ireland is helping to fulfil IBM’s global research, development and business strategy.”

Dennis King, vice-president for Advanced Collaboration Development at IBM, said: “The Ireland Lab is one of more than 80 IBM research and development laboratories around the world, providing intelligent software that serve business purposes in many industries such as healthcare, energy, telecommunications, transportation, retail and public services.”

IBM already employs about 4,000 staff in the Republic.

Yesterday’s investment will raise the number working in its software laboratories to 600.