WS2 receive €1m funding

The majority of WS2's funding came from Oyster Investments and Enterprise Ireland gave the remainder in the form of research and development funding.

Venture capital company Oyster Investments has interests in a number of Irish companies. Set up by Bill McCabe, who founded SmartForce, last year it contributed to a fund raising by SoftCo.

WS2 [formerly WebSoft] was founded in 1997 by Richard Fitzgerald [CEO] and Peter Mitchell [CTO]. Originally a web development company, working with companies such as Hewlett Packard and Eircom, the company is now an applications development company, employing 12 people.

Its product AstOra is designed to reduce a company's costs by relaying information between existing business systems, workers and vehicles on the move.

A server-based application, it extracts, transforms and publishes business and time critical data to and from vehicles, mobile devices and internet clients.

WS2 is to use the new funding in its drive to increase sales in Ireland and the UK and to extend its business into Europe and the US.