Focus on Funding: The Dublin-based technology company Shenick raised €2.5 million last month to build its business across Asia, the US and Europe.

Innovacom, the venture capital arm of France Telecom, and Trinity Venture Capital supplied the cash to Shenick, which provides telecoms firms with technology to test the performance and security of their networks.

The company was founded in 2000 by three former executives at the highly successful Irish software firm, Euristix, founded by Jim Mountjoy. Alan Robinson is chief executive at Shenick, Robert Winters is chief marketing officer and and Kevin Glavin is chief technology officer at Shenick.

"We are currently 35 people and plan to grow the company through the external fundraising," said Mr Winters, who attended this week's opening of the firm's Singapore office.

Shenick sells its technology to equipment makers such as Alcatel and Cisco as well as network operators such as British Telecom and France Telecom. "We offer companies an early warning system to detect if there are any problems with their networks," says Winters, who estimates Shenick will make several million euros of revenue in 2005.

The company's core product is called diversifEye, which is a mix of hardware and software used to monitor broadband networks. The company's name and logo is based on Shenick island, an island off the east coast of Ireland that hosts a Martello tower.

Trinity Venture Capital first invested in Shenick in 2003 when it took on board its first €2.5 million of venture capital finance.