SOFTWARE AUDITING firm iQuate plans to create 25 jobs over the next 12 months on the back of an increased sales pipeline.

This is a significant expansion for the Dublin company, which currently employs 16 people. The new roles will include software development, implementation, project management and sales.

The company provides an auditing tool for users of Oracle database software. According to iQuate’s founder and chief technology officer Jason Keogh, Oracle software licensing is an “extremely complex” area.

More than 90 per cent of iQuate’s customers are outside Ireland, said Mr Keogh.

“We focus on very large networks and very large multinational clients. We’re dealing with technologies that by and large don’t exist in Ireland,” he said. “The largest networks here would have 5,000-10,000 users on them. We have customers with up to 250,000 nodes on the network. It’s a completely different scale.”

This has led to difficulties with hiring staff with the necessary experience. The company says it has had several open positions for months.

“We’re trying to find sales expertise of people who can have intelligent conversations with this level of customer and, on the development side, we need people who can handle systems with a high volume of transactions.”

The company was founded in 2002 and broke even for the first time in 2008. Mr Keogh said last year was “disastrous” financially, with the only bright spot being the work put into research and development on the product.

In July iQuate was certified by Oracle as the only accepted third-party auditing tool for its software licence management. This has led directly to significant deals, Mr Keogh said, including one contract with a major international brand.

“We’re expecting to quadruple revenues this year over last year and we have enough sales in our pipeline to increase it by six times, theoretically,” he said. The company is seeking further investment this year, Mr Keogh added.