Deals done this past week


27 Sep 2010

An overview of the week in deals in the Irish technology sector, including the research collaboration between Intel and Tyndall National Institute, UCC.

Intel and Tyndall National Institute form US$1.5m research collaboration

Intel has signed a $1.5m advanced research collaboration with Irish ICT institute, Tyndall National Institute, UCC.

The agreement is the first of its kind for Intel in Ireland and establishes a direct collaboration between Tyndall and the heart of Intel’s technology research group in the US. Intel has just one other similar agreement in Europe.

This agreement will provide Intel with a commercial exploitation licence to technology created through the collaboration with Tyndall. Under this agreement, Tyndall and Intel researchers will investigate next-generation materials, devices and photonics technologies that could have a huge impact on the direction of future electronic devices.

I.T. Alliance wins €750k export deals in France and Denmark

Irish outsourcing company I.T. Alliance has won a number of export deals in continental Europe.

The contracts, valued at €750,000, are for optimising and supporting two data centres in France and Denmark.

The contracts were won through a new Tier 1 Alliance Partner. I.T. Alliance’s business model is based around the principle of being a trusted outsourcing partner to the world’s global outsourcing leaders or Tier 1 service providers.

3 alliance with Google to bring mobile cloud to small firms

Mobile operator 3 Ireland has signed an agreement with search giant Google to provide cloud computing bundles to small businesses and give them access to technology only affordable to large companies.

The offer, which is exclusive to 3, includes the Google Apps suite of communication and collaboration tools, a free mobile handset and dongle from 3. 

LinkedIn acquires start-up ChoiceVendor

Professional online network LinkedIn has agreed to acquire start-up ChoiceVendor in its second major acquisition in the space of six weeks.

ChoiceVendor, a San Francisco start-up, founded in 2008 by former Google employees, provides customer reviews about accountants professionals, call centres and payroll services.

The ChoiceVendor deal marks LinkedIn’s second acquisition in recent weeks. mSpoke – a next-generation personalisation solutions provider – was acquired by LinkedIn last August as part of its intention to add to its pool of technologies and talent.

No financial statement was released concerning the acquisition.

Novell and SAP in Linux application alliance

Novell and SAP are collaborating for an optimised solution for customers running SAP applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications help users reduce the complexity of their application deployments, along with installation time and costs.

The solution simplifies physical and virtual deployments of SAP solutions, including the SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search app, SAP NetWeaver business Warehouse Accelerator software, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software and SAP’s emerging in-memory platform.