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E-blana opens new facility in Armagh
Wednesday, September 25 2002
by Andrew McLindon


Irish e-business solutions provider, E-blana Enterprise Group, opened a
STG500,000 software development facility in the Armagh Digital Corridor on
Wednesday.



The Armagh centre will be used to support the development and promotion of
traceability solutions and services for the livestock and primary food producing
sectors.

 

Based in the A:Tek centre in the Armagh Digital Corridor, it employs around 30
people, 27 of whom have transferred from the company's subsidiaries in Craigavon
and Dundalk. E-blana intends on recruiting another 14 staff for the facility over
the coming months.

 

The Dublin-based company, which develops e-government and e-finance solutions,
has opened the centre as a part of partnership with Hewlett-Packard. In July, HP
decided on E blana's traceability solution, Eurovet, as its preferred
traceability product within its e-government portfolio. 

 

HP will starting marketing and selling the product in the EMEA region from next
week and there is a possibility that this arrangement will be extended worldwide,
a spokesperson for the company told ElectricNews.Net. The spokesperson also said
that HP could invest in E-blana in the near future as part of their joint
venture.

 

E-blana said it couldn't put a monetary value on the HP deal, but remarked that
it was invaluable in terms of recognition of its expertise by one of the world's
leading technology companies. 

 

E-blana is investing STG364,000 in its new operation, while Invest Northern
Ireland has given the company an interest free repayable loan of STG140,000 for
setting-up in Armagh. 

 

According to John Molloy, E-blana's managing director, several other locations in
Europe were scouted before Armagh was chosen. "We went with Armagh in the end
because of the A:Tek building's unrivalled infrastructure, the support from
Invest NI and the high quality of the local workforce," said Molloy.

 

Established by Molloy in 1988, E-blana was originally called Exselan Computer
Systems. The company initially provided infrastructure and Lotus products to the
enterprise marketplace, but after an acquisition spree in early 2000, which
included the purchases of Facilities Management Workshop, a geographic
information systems provider and PACE, a leading infrastructure, content
management and workflow company, it was re-named the E-blana Enterprise Group. 



The company currently employs around 65 people in offices in Ireland, the UK and
Brussels.

E-blana's move to Armagh was welcomed by Northern Ireland's Minister for
Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Sir Reg Empey, as a boost to the North's
standing in the software products and services sector.

 

"This project will play an important role in developing our technology-led
economy," said Sir Empey in a statement. "It will create high quality jobs in
an export focused operation and help attract other leading-edge ICT companies to
this area."

 

The A:Tek centre is part of the Armagh Monaghan Digital Corridor, which is a
cross-border project that aims make the area a centre of innovation and
technology. Its sister building, M:Tek, is in Monaghan.