Software leader to base research centre in North

THE world’s leading provider of business software solutions has selected Belfast as the location for its first research centre in Ireland or Britain, it was announced yesterday.

German headquartered international company SAP AG is setting up a centre for research in the emerging field of grid computing.

Invest Northern Ireland is providing 50% of the £1.8 million (€2.62m) project cost under a programme which aims to increase industrial research in the North.

Seven research jobs at PhD level will initially be created in the research centre.

Grid computing is the linking of computers, data and application software to provide computing power that far exceeds what is available on a single PC.

Jeremy Fitch, managing director of Business International at Invest NI, said the new project was highly innovative and the knowledge

developed in Belfast would put the North in a very strong position to attract similar foreign ICT investments.