Anam buys DCU-spawned media firm


27 Sep 2004

Dublin mobile software firm Anam is understood to have acquired Aliope, a campus company spawned from Dublin College University’s Research Institute for Networks and Communications Engineering (RINCE).

Last year Aliope announced plans to create 11 jobs after being one of 10 companies to win €25m in investment from Enterprise Ireland.

The company is developing a technology that enables TV viewers to search for scenes and clips in the same way internet users search through Google. For example, a user will be able to request a notification such as: “tell me via a text message when anybody is talking about the budget on Network 2” or ask for a summarisation that shows a shortened version of a selected programme such as the highlights of a football match.

According to reports the deal involves a small cash consideration and the owners of both Anam and Aliope have reinvested in the larger company.

Aliope was established in 2001 at DCU’s RINCE operation, which itself was created out of a €45m investment under the Government’s Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI).

As reported earlier in siliconrepublic.com, RINCE is one of the first research centres in the country to reap the earliest fruits of the PRTLI scheme and is generating €2.2m a year in external funding through investors such as Intel, Ericsson, Esat BT, Lucent, Xilinx and ParthusCEVA.

By John Kennedy