Catherine Kelly, Quest
US TECHNOLOGY firm Quest Software announced in January that it planned to hire 150 people for its European shared-services centre in Cork. About 100 of the positions are now filled – ahead of schedule, says Catherine Kelly, Quest’s regional vice-president for sales.
“We’ve been delighted with the calibre of the recruitment so far, which is why we are ahead of schedule,” says Kelly.
The California company, which has become active in the cloud computing space, took almost five years to settle on a location to serve the company’s European operations, with options in Spain, Britain and eastern Europe examined before it settled on Cork.
“Cork was really the decision because of the technology that has developed here over the last couple of years,” says Kelly, who has Irish-American dual citizenship and had been based in Cork for five years before joining Quest in April this year. The local supply of computer science graduates, alongside “cluster” benefits, was a key factor.
“The majority of enterprise software companies are growing. We have 10 per cent revenue growth in 2011 over 2010,” says Kelly.
The company invests 18.5 per cent of turnover in research and development and, over time, the Cork operation is likely to include activity in this area. “Certainly the talent pool would support that,” says Kelly.
Paul Duffy
Pfizer
THE MOST senior Pfizer executive in Ireland is vice-president Paul Duffy, who professes to being “very pleased” the company has found a buyer for one of the two Cork manufacturing sites that were earmarked for closure last year.
Biomarin will buy the Shanbally site, it was announced yesterday, while the company is still looking for a buyer for its plant at Loughbeg.
Around 1,000 people are directly employed at Pfizer’s other Cork manufacturing facilities in Ringaskiddy and Little Island, while the pharmaceutical group employs more than 4,000 people in Ireland as a whole.
The company is perhaps best known in Ireland for producing Viagra, but its interests here are varied, taking in vaccines, animal health, ingredients and a global financial services and treasury operation.
“Given the size and breadth of Pfizer’s operations in Ireland, different parts of the Pfizer organisation here may be increasing or decreasing colleague and contractor numbers throughout any given year,” Pfizer says.
“Whilst we would not be in a position to discuss specific numbers around current potential employment opportunities, Ireland remains an important location for Pfizer.”
Pfizer describes the recent increase of science and engineering graduates as “welcome”, as are recent IDA Ireland announcements heralding new investors into the country.
“Maintaining focus on improving cost competitiveness” in relation to energy and other utilities is cited as a challenge by the company.
Cathy Kearney
Apple
APPLE DOES not discuss its staffing and was unwilling to confirm to The Irish Times the number of people it employs at its Hollyhill facility in Cork.
According to the Cork Chamber and other sources, however, more than 2,000 people are employed in Cork by the company, which has a long relationship with the city.
Apple first came to Cork in 1981, meaning it is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its presence there this year. During that time its manufacturing production lines have evolved to suit the company’s changing roster of must-have consumer electronics.
During the 1990s – when Apple Mac was struggling to compete with Microsoft in the home-computer market – there was a near-permanent threat of Apple layoffs in the city. In 1999, about 450 staff were made redundant when the company moved its iMac production to Wales.
The company’s expansion in the 2000s has been good news for Cork, however, and it is now the biggest employer in the city.
It is understood that Cathy Kearney, Apple’s senior director of European operations, heads up the Apple Sales International business in Ireland, while the Hollyhill facility has capacity for 2,500 people.
Apple is currently advertising more than 30 positions, with the specified languages including Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish and Hungarian, and the positions ranging from multilingual Mac experts to logistics analysts, compliance specialists and technical advisers for its iPad, iPhone and iPod products.
Bob Savage and Jason Ward
EMC
WHEN MULTINATIONAL software company EMC first established a manufacturing base in Ovens, Co Cork, in 1988 – its first base outside North America – the term “cloud computing” was yet to reach the national lexicon.
However, cloud computing – the online storage of data – is probably the best way to describe its business now. It’s a fast-mushrooming sector, with EMC, one of the forerunners, employing 2,500 people in Ireland, with the majority of them based in what is now a multi-functional Cork campus.
“Data volumes are going to grow 50 times over the next five years and companies need to store, manage and analyse that,” says Ward.
EMC’s operations in Cork include an executive briefing centre, customer services, sales, an international supply chain, software development and a multilingual centre, and some 90 per cent of its employees have third-level qualifications, according to country manager Jason Ward.
There are 36 different nationalities in Cork speaking 26 languages. “It’s a diverse cultural mix,” says Ward.
Ward is based in Dublin, where EMC has a sales office, while Enterprise Ireland board member Bob Savage is a vice-president of the company and general manager of the Cork site.
The limited flight connections from Cork airport is a big issue for the company, which regularly flies in customers to visit its executive briefing centre. “Having direct air access is very, very important for us and also for the Cork economy,” says Ward.
Stephen Hegarty
Big Fish Games
STEPHEN HEGARTY joined Big Fish Games in December 2010 as director of European business operations. He runs the US games company’s growing Irish business, with some 70 employees based at its Mahon offices in Cork, which serves as its European headquarters.
Big Fish Games, which is the largest global distributor of casual interactive games in the world, specialising in games for mobiles and PCs, is targeting 100 jobs at Cork.
“Cork is awesome”, its chief executive, Jeremy Lewis, says in a promotional video for IDA Ireland.
The company cites “people, people, people” – or more specifically, their multilingual skills – as the reason for choosing Cork as its European base. There are three main tasks carried out at its operation – customer support, game localisation and game testing. It looked at seven countries in the EU before settling on Ireland.
Lewis, a former Goldman Sachs executive, joined Big Fish Games in 2006, but it was founded in Seattle in 2002 by Paul Thelen.
Recent product launches by the company include a series of Facebook games, including Faunasphere, MyTribe and Treasure Quest, which have attracted more than 1.5 million monthly users.
Tim Daly
Mcafee
MOST COMPUTER users will be familiar with the name McAfee, the security software maker that detects and eliminates viruses, spyware and spam. The company, owned by Intel since earlier this year, has been based in Cork since November 2004.
In the intervening period, McAfee’s highly profitable operations in the city have expanded and more than 300 are now employed.
The most recent filed accounts for McAfee Ireland, for 2009, show it had turnover of €341 million and pretax profits of €21 million. The profitable performance has continued since then, says Tim Daly, McAfee Ireland’s senior director of operations.
“The industry is quite strong and it’s growing quite robustly each year, as more threats have emerged,” says Daly. The Cork operation includes a sales team of 100 people who sell to small and medium enterprises throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). There’s also a global product readiness team, which localises products in more than 30 languages, and a finance team for EMEA, an operations team for both EMEA and Asia-Pacific, as well as procurement, logistics, HR and IT teams. The newest piece of the jigsaw is an R&D team, which Daly describes as in its infancy.
Daly, who worked for FileMaker (now an Apple company) in Dublin before joining McAfee, believes Intel’s $7.6 billion takeover of McAfee has been positive.
“It’s allowing us to do more development and add more incremental engineering,” he says. The chipmaker has said it will treat McAfee as an independent subsidiary, in much the same way that it treats Havok, its Dublin-based games acquisition.
“What we do at McAfee is quite different than chip manufacturing in Leixlip.”
