Polarlake, a small Dublin-based software company, has raised about €600,000 from its existing venture capital investors to help it reach breakeven point.
The firm, which was founded in 2002 as a spin-off from another Irish firm called Xiam, develops software that enables companies to integrate their existing systems in an efficient manner. Its products are based on the core XML software standard and are designed to enable big corporations to buy off-the-shelf software rather than develop and implement their own bespoke systems.
"We are addressing the single biggest problem in IT today: how to connect different systems together," says Ronan Bradley, Polarlake's chief executive, who previously worked for the original Irish middleware firm, Iona.
Polarlake, which currently employs about 35 people, has financial customers such as JP Morgan Chase and Man Financial Ltd (UK) as well as telecoms clients such as Midwest Wireless. It also provides its software to British Government agencies.
However, perhaps the firm's best single market is in Japan where it has signed a reseller deal with Hitachi. It expects the deal to create sales of $30 million over three years and has signed similar reseller deals in Britain with systems integrator firms such as Accenture.
The Irish venture capital firm Delta Partners and the European fund Add Partners, both existing investors in Polarlake, reinvested in the recent funding round. Polarlake previously raised capital of €3.2 million in early 2003.
The current venture capital funding will be used to push the firm towards profitability. Its most recent results filed with the Companies Registration Office show that it lost €1.27 million for the year ended June 30th, 2004. It had net assets worth €507,099 at that date.
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