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WS2 scores EUR1m in venture capital
Thursday, March 07 2002
by Andrew McLindon


Dublin-based mobile applications developer WS2 has raised EUR1 million in funding
to continue its expansion in Ireland and the UK.

 



The majority of the funding came from venture capital company Oyster Investment,
which was set up by SmartForce founder Bill McCabe. The remainder came from
Enterprise Ireland and was in the form of R&D funding for the company's mobile
application server suite.

 

According to WS2, the money will be used to increase its presence in Ireland and
to further its sales efforts in the UK with an eventual view to extending its
business into Europe and the US.

 

WS2's chief executive, Richard Fitzgerald, told ElectricNews.Net that finding the
money had not been as difficult as he imagined it would be and the company had to
turn down investment offers from several suitors. "Given the current climate,
we were extremely pleased to raise the money and although it was easier than we
thought it was going to be, we faced a much higher level of scrutiny than we
would have 18 months ago," commented Fitzgerald.

 

WS2's patent-pending AstaOra technology is a server-based application that
extracts, transforms and integrates business and time critical data with vehicle
fleets, mobile devices and Internet clients. The AstaOra server relays
information between existing data sources such as legacy systems based on Lotus
Notes and MS SQL Server, and Internet-based or mobile clients.  

 

The company currently sees great potential for the technology in the area of
monitoring commercial vehicle use. "Information on a vehicle's speed and
location can be sent to our server and because we use XML we can take that
information from any GPS (global positioning system) unit and integrate it with
fleet management systems or service and maintenance systems," explains
Fitzgerald.

 

WS2 is currently working with a UK company on such a project and believes it can
benefit from inking further deals in that market. "There is a huge gap in the
market because there are seven million commercial vehicles in the UK. At the
moment, executives are connected to their offices in a variety of ways, but a
company's vehicles are its last disconnected asset," said Fitzgerald.

 

He added that businesses would benefit from installing such systems through
reduced fuel costs, increased productivity and better health and safety. 

 

Founded by Fitzgerald and Peter Mitchell in 1997, WS2 started life as a Web
development company working with Gateway, HP, Compaq and Eircom. Since then the
company has moved into the applications development area and recent projects
include the development of a mobile intranet for UK-based The Leasing Group and a
B2B agriculture portal, Farm2trade.ie.

 

WS2 employs 12 people and plans to increase that number to 20 by year-end. It can
be found at http://www.ws2.com.