When Ann Riordan was about to take up her position as the first general manager of Microsoft Ireland in 1991, a friend asked her whether Microsoft was a wool company.

Ms Riordan (52), who announced this week she was resigning after nine years heading up Microsoft's sales and marketing in Ireland, was faced with the challenge back then of introducing Microsoft's products to a largely computer illiterate Irish market.

Working alone initially, she quickly came to know Microsoft's day and night-shift manufacturers while putting in long hours at its then fledgling premises in the Sandyford Industrial Estate.

Ms Riordan remembers just managing to fill the National Concert Hall for the launch of DOS 5. More recently Microsoft's launch of Windows 2000 was oversubscribed when it took place in the RDS.

She also remembers Microsoft founder and chairman, Mr Bill Gates, addressing an audience of 500 people in the Shelbourne Hotel, and when he asked how many Windows users were in attendance, just 10 people raised their hands.

Ms Riordan has spent the last 25 years in the technology industry, with much of that time spent in the top position. While today it is commonplace for women to occupy senior managerial positions, back then it was something of a novelty.

"I would get callers asking to speak to the managing director after they had already been put through to me. They just heard the female voice and assumed I was the secretary," Ms Riordan says.

Although she points out that she has never viewed her career progress in male or female terms, in her early working days at the Gas Company she set a historic precedent when in the 1960s she became the first woman to break the State marriage ban on women returning to the workplace after they married.

"I just couldn't understand the logic behind it, and kept questioning it until there were no arguments left in the debate. Strangely enough, management were happy enough to take me back, but it was the union that resisted because they feared women were taking the `breadwinners' jobs'."

However, she was only allowed return for six months. Later, when she had become her family's "breadwinner", she was forced to travel to England with two small children to find work.

"That was a terrifying experience. I remember seeing an ad on my first journey on the Tube for a clerical officer with the Ministry of Defence earning £25 a week. I got off at Oxford Street, found an employment agency and told them I wanted a clerical job earning £25 a week within five minutes of the Tube because I was afraid I'd get lost."

Immediately, she got a job with L'Oreal earning £35 a week with a £500 bonus after six months. Later, she worked in the City as an analyst during one of the worst bear markets in history.

It was only when she began working with Wordplex a start-up organisation selling dedicated word processors - at £12,000 apiece - that Ms Riordan got her opportunity to return to Ireland.

Taking up the role of managing director for Ireland, Ms Riordan was happy to return to her family support structure and the good education system it offered her children. However, the sales culture shocked her, when she found herself wasting months trying to close deals with customers who just didn't like to say no.

Later, while working for a personal computer company called Zenith, Ms Riordan was approached by Microsoft to fill its position as general manager for Ireland. The post had already been advertised, but because a number of interviewees had said they would run Microsoft here like Ann Riordan at Zenith, they decided to approach her.

Ms Riordan views her time at Microsoft as a very happy one, and her loyalty to the company is evident. She rejects the suggestion that Microsoft took a monopolistic position in the software market.

"If I look at what I had to do to get market share I worked for it, I didn't take it. Customers have consistently voted for our products with their feet. If a settlement means compromising our right to innovate that would be very difficult to accept."

She has always been impressed by Bill Gates, not least for his excellent dancing skills, she says, but also his rapid ability to formulate ideas and solutions. She remembers him suddenly calculating when he was about to address the 5,000 strong Dublin audience at the launch of Windows '95 that it would be the biggest audience he had addressed anywhere as a percentage of population.

Ms Riordan says she has not fully decided what she will do next, but she expects it will be in the voluntary area in some kind of a mentoring role. "I enjoy identifying people's potential and helping them develop their skills."

While Ms Riordan is pleased attitudes to women working have almost come full circle since she started her career, she expresses concern that there is still very little state or corporate support for the working mother.

"In the UK there was a state creche infrastructure in the 1970s; we're still not even anywhere near that. People can no longer depend on their extended families, or other women, people have more interests nowadays. It can't be taken for granted that women want to be at home minding your children."