Business First Summer 2017 Business First Magazine Summer 2017 | Page 54

TECH 2020
Derry is high tech centre
by Sinead Mclaughlin, Chief Executive, Londonderry Chamber of Commerce
erry has a collective vision of itself as a
centre of new technology expertise.
That vision is already to a significant
extent realised.
BT should be given credit for assisting the
vision to be achieved, through its
sponsorship of Derry as City of Culture 2013.
Its sponsorship provided Derry with the best
street level broadband capacity of any city in
the UK or Ireland.
That adds to Hibernia’s undersea
connectivity with North America, called
Project Kelvin, which means that Derry has
perhaps the fastest online connectivity with
America of any city in Europe.
The Catalyst Inc business centre – formally
the Northern Ireland Science Park – is a key
initiative that supports local high­tech
companies accelerate their development and
expansion.
Derry has attracted FDI from many global
high­tech companies, including Seagate,
Allstate and Fujitsu. Belfast­based IT
company Kainos has an important operating
centre in Derry.
One of Derry’s indigenous businesses
Singularity was bought by a global company
and is now part of the Lexmark empire.
Learning Pool is another of Derry’s success
stories, which has grown rapidly in both size
and reach.
Its CEO Paul McElvaney is also a former
winner of the title Entrepreneur of the Year,
in the North West Business of the Year
awards.
The 2017 Business of the Year sits in that
tradition of supporting Derry’s role as a
leading high­tech centre.
The winner is MetaCompliance – a
company that is positioned in one of the most
D
52 www.businessfirstonline.co.uk
vital roles of all in the modern economy as
provider of cybersecurity software and
services.
MetaCompliance is also one of Northern
Ireland’s fastest growing medium sized firms,
jumping in employee numbers from 25 to 54
in just one year.
While MetaCompliance is headquartered in
Derry, it now has branches in London,
Birmingham and the United States, with
another in Germany to open shortly.
“MetaCompliance is the hardest working,
fastest growing, most innovative, technology
company in the country,” according to its
CEO, Robbie O’Brien.
“I love building a company in my home
town which is trading with the big players all
over the world.
“We have local people developing our
products for US companies, EU companies
and major operations globally. We want to
show that we can build an international
software company from ground the up by
people from the North West.
“Our guys are coming up with ideas and
products that international companies need
right now.”
In its application for the prize of North
West Business of the Year, MetaCompliance
emphasised the importance of the company’s
work to the wellbeing of the connected
economy.
“The sophistication of cybercrime
continues to evolve on a minute by minute
basis and we have kept ahead of all the latest
security threats that companies face on a day
to day basis.
“A prime example of this would be our
ransomware software that helps
organisations train their staff to be aware
and wise to ra