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