It's probably no coincidence that Northern Ireland's Economy Minister Nigel Dodds this week announced almost 500 new technology jobs.
Earlier this week business and technology journalists from around Europe and as far afield as Canada were taken on a tour of Northern Ireland technology companies by development agencies UK Trade & Investment and Invest Northern Ireland.
With that trip fresh in their minds, Northern Ireland Inc quickly followed up with a series of significant new investments by technology companies.
The biggest announcement came from Fujitsu Services, which, as part of an £18 million (€26.6 million) investment, will create over 400 jobs in Belfast and Derry over the next three years. As Fujitsu Services, and previously ICL, the company has a long history in Northern Ireland stretching back over 30 years. But by establishing a centre of excellence for managed services, it is sending out a signal that the North is a good place to develop technology.
In addition to Fujitsu, Northern Ireland has successfully attracted a number of high-profile financial services multinationals such as Citi Group, HBOS and US insurers AllState and Liberty Mutual, all of which have technology and e-commerce subsidiaries in Belfast.
But growth in the local IT sector is also coming from less well-known companies such as Wombat Financial Software, which yesterday said it would create 77 new jobs in Belfast following a £2 million investment. It provides software that ensures hedge funds and banks get financial market data at the highest speed possible.
According to Danny Moore, chief operations officer of Wombat, this is not a trivial task. "Five years ago, the typical exchange was producing 1,000 messages a second, now some of the large US exchanges might have 200,000 per second," said Moore. "Our data distribution technology distributes those messages with mili-second latency."
The multinationals are also creating indigenous spin-outs such as Asidua, formed following a management buy-out of part of Fujitsu's business. It now has two distinct divisions - a device services unit that writes embedded software for telecommunications equipment and an application and data integration division that carries out large projects for organisations such as the PSNI and BT.
Currently employing 123, it has opened an office in Birmingham and will shortly expand to Dublin. According to chief executive Steve Brankin, its biggest inhibitor to growth is finding suitably qualified staff. The company has developed a reputation for hiring only the best talent: "First-class honours [ students] come in here all the time and get shown the door," says Brankin.
The fast growth of the sector has meant that all companies are struggling to find the right talent. Denis Murphy, chairman of Mobile Aware, says his firm has had to turn to eastern Europe for offshore development work.
Clearly the local firms, development agencies and politicians are looking across the Border and hoping to emulate the success of the South in attracting inward technology investments, as well as fostering indigenous companies. Dodds reminded the journalists on the press tour that there was cross-party consensus in the Northern Assembly that corporation tax should be "reduced to at least the level it is in the Republic". There may be objections to such a move in the UK and Europe, but Dodds said such obstacles are "not insuperable if the political will is there".
