Did he go or was he pushed? That was the question on most people's minds when they heard yesterday that Mr Fran Rooney had resigned as chairman and chief executive of Baltimore, the Internet software company he formed just five years ago.

The official line is that Mr Rooney left Baltimore willingly to find fresh pastures. And that was the message from his temporary successor, Mr Paul Sanders, who said: "It was Fran's decision to resign. He's indicated the company has now entered a new phase of development, with fresh challenges, and he has other interests he wants to focus attention on." There is general agreement that Mr Rooney was the driving force behind the extraordinary growth which saw Baltimore reach the dizzying heights of FTSE100 membership.

Analysts agree that Mr Rooney was the ideal chief executive when Baltimore was pursuing aggressive growth, but they are also agreed that he was not the man to preside over the restructuring and aggressive cost-cutting that Baltimore needed to put in place when the downturn hit the company.

"I think Fran Rooney did a good job of developing the company but the market has toughened up considerably. "Increasingly Baltimore needed a chief executive who has been involved in this kind of stuff before and Paul Sanders is relatively well regarded," one analyst said.

As much as anything, Baltimore was the victim of the collapse in the value of dot.com stocks and also the impact that the economic slowdown had on purchasing of high-value software packages such as Baltimore's PKI products. Commonly, Baltimore's contracts with major banks were worth $500,000 (€585,274) and that was before the maintenance costs involved in servicing the software.

"Baltimore set up an infrastructure that reflected a level of sales that just didn't materialise. And when the downturn came they were slow in reducing the cost base," said Merrion Stockbrokers analyst, Mr John Coolican.

He pointed out that while alarm bells were ringing at Baltimore in January and February, it was three months before they announced a restructuring programme to cut costs.

"They didn't seem to have their finger on the pulse, they should have moved quicker when things started to slow down," he added.

Mr Coolican added: "When buyers were deciding what they could cut back, they looked at what they absolutely had to have and what was postponable. And Baltimore's products were in the postponable category. You might like to have them but you can manage without them."

But apart from the general downturn in the business and the perceived lack of urgency in addressing the cost base, analysts said Mr Rooney had lost the confidence of the financial markets and "his was the head that had to go".

They said Mr Rooney and the rest of the Baltimore management team were guilty of a number of self-inflicted injuries, not least the shambles of an analysts' meeting in Dublin in March where a comment by Mr Rooney about delayed sales led to a massive sell-off of Baltimore shares.

The comments also led to an investigation by the Financial Services Authority into a possible breach of rules on the disclosure of market-sensitive information.

Three profit warnings in the space of three months and an announcement last month that seemed to imply that six contracts being announced were new contracts rather than existing business meant Mr Rooney's position was becoming increasingly untenable.

Yesterday's announcement of his departure might have been a shock, but only in its timing. Most in the market had expected August's second quarter earnings statement to accompany an announcement that Mr Rooney was stepping down.

The only surprise is he has departed earlier than anticipated.