[The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com] [Boston Globe Online / Business] [ Send this story to a friend | Easy-print version | Add to Daily User ] TECHNOLOGY & [Image] ADVERTISEMENTS INNOVATION Burlington center helps Irish firms [Image] gain US toehold [Image] By Jerry Ackerman, Globe Staff, 2/14/2000 [Image]lmost overnight, the number of Irish companies choosing to put down their North American roots in Boston has grown by nearly one-third - and there are more to come. More accurately, this Irish invasion, consisting almost entirely of technology-based companies, is taking place just off Route 128 in Burlington, where Enterprise Ireland, a government economic development agency, has rented offices for Irish firms that need a toehold as they expand across the Atlantic. Ten companies have moved in since mid-January at Enterprise Ireland's Trade and Technology Center on the fourth floor at 35 Corporate Road, next to the Burlington Marriott Hotel. The total space there is about 2,500 square feet, says Fiona Shanley, who runs the center, but there's room for a few more firms. Most of these arrivals are sales and marketing personnel bent on taking advantage of the vast market opportunities the United States and Canada offer European start-ups. ''America is our number one most strategically important market,'' says Paul Monaghan, chief executive of Qset Ltd., a Galway-based software and services firm that last Wednesday moved into sublet space looking out toward downtown Boston. ''The States lead in adoption of information technology and are very open to new things. America is the place where you can get the most people to talk to you,'' he said. The Trade and Technology Center's focus is to help Irish companies get settled in the US business environment. Shanley emphasizes her tenants are not start-ups: They're first vetted for financial strength. ''All of them are well established, well funded, and have high growth potential.'' Paul Kerley, chief executive of Norkom Technologies Ltd. of Dublin, which sells customer-relations analytical services to the financial industries, applauds Enterprise Ireland's help. ''They facilitated an easy entry,'' he said. ''They introduced us to local public relations agencies and a market research firm, and have kept us in touch with the correct conferences and speaking opportunities we need to tell our story.'' This Irish influx is no accident. Rather, it is one result of an ongoing campaign begun by John Cullinane, a Boston software industry pioneer and supporter of economic prosperity as a key to peace in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Cullinane says his involvement in this was almost accidental. It began eight years ago when he was asked to speak in Ireland to some software executives. He says he assumed the companies ''wouldn't be very good. I couldn't have been more wrong. They could easily make it in Kendall Square.'' But they needed help getting money and getting started in North America. Cullinane mentored some, invested in others, and enlisted his Boston friends to do the same. His model was Israel's program for helping its technology entrepreneurs. Part of that program is the Market Gateway business incubator run by the New England Israel Chamber of Commerce in Boston since 1996. Market Gateway has ''graduated'' a dozen companies - some of which actually were from Ireland and Scotland - and in the process helped them find larger quarters. Cullinane says 70 companies and 45 from Ireland and Northern Ireland now do business in the Boston area. One, in which he is an investor, is Iona Technologies, which opened a three-person sales office in 1994 and now has 200 employees. While the Israeli-sponsored Market Gateway and Enterprise Ireland's center focus on technology-based companies, they welcome others. Shanley said the next tenant due in Burlington is Dublin-based Sonaf Designs - a consulting firm that designs interiors for Irish pubs. This story ran on page C04 of the Boston Globe on 2/14/2000. © Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company. [ Send this story to a friend | Easy-print version | Add to Daily User ]