Technology company Corvil has halved its workforce following the lay off of 35 workers, The Irish Times learned yesterday.
Corvil confirmed that it has reduced staff numbers from 70 to 35. The bulk of the job losses were at its Irish headquarters in Dublin, but it also let workers go in its New York and UK offices.
The company develops products that guarantee the quality of information technology networks. It has a partnership with Cisco Systems, the dominant multinational player in that market, which is also an investor in the company.
Since May, Cisco has been selling Corvil's products as part of its own systems. The Irish company said yesterday that this had cut its need for a direct salesforce.
The bulk of those workers that it has let go are in sales, marketing and support, although Corvil has laid off a number of other staff as well.
In a separate development, the company recently discovered a "bug" in one of its products, used by a corporate customer.
It has been working on repairing this problem with the existing software and ensuring that it does not recur with the new version of that product. It has also alerted Cisco Systems to the fact that it has encountered this problem.
Corvil was one of the nominee companies in the emerging entrepreneur division of the 2005 year's Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, which will be announced later this month.
Mathematician John Lewis founded the company five years ago. The company's software operates by predicting how much space a given piece of digital information is going to take up on a network, and then guaranteeing that that amount of space is available, cutting out delays and the danger of losing information.
This kind of certainty is needed in networks where people carry out secure transactions such as transferring money or sensitive information, or those that deliver services such as video streaming, where quality is a key requirement.
Its system is based on a series of mathematical formulae developed by Mr Lewis. Corvil says it is in the only company in the world that has successfully developed this kind of product.
Last February, the firm raised €15 million from investors. Backers included ACT Venture Capital, a leading Irish venture capitalist that has a strong record in backing technology companies.
The other supporters were Cisco Systems and Apax Partners, an international venture capital house that invests across a range of sectors, including information technology and communications.
The fundraising round was Corvil's third and largest. Since it began operations in 2000, the company has raised a total of €30 million. ACT has participated in each round, while Apax and Cisco have taken part in rounds two and three.
