A digest of the top business technology news stories from the past week, beginning with the news Ireland is Europe’s most entrepreneurial country.
Ireland ranks as Europe’s most entrepreneurial country
Ireland is Europe’s most entrepreneurial country, having attracted four times as much venture capital per capita as the European average, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal reveals.
In its analysis, The Wall Street Journal examined Dow Jones VentureSource data on the total amount of venture capital raised by tech companies in each European country since 2003, divided by population to get the per capita figure, then averaged it out over the 39 quarters.
Despite the recession, Ireland’s tech start-ups held up well, according to The Wall Street Journal. Of the country’s 311 venture capital-backed deals since 2003, 131, or 42pc, came in 2009 or later, VentureSource said.
Ireland’s total deal value from the first quarter of 2003 through the third quarter of 2013 amounted to US$1.28bn. Average deal size per capita in the same period totalled US$278.73.
75 life-sciences and technology jobs for Dublin as Indian trade mission bears fruit
Two Indian technology companies, Synowledge and Aditi Technologies, are to create 75 jobs in Dublin between them, it emerged as Richard Bruton, Ireland’s Jobs Minister, led a trade mission to India last week.
Synowledge, specialising in the provision of drug safety and regulatory affairs services for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical-device sectors, is to establish an international headquarters in Dublin, with the creation of 35 jobs.
Aditi Technologies, a ‘Cloud First’ technology services company, is to establish its European Services and Business Development Centre in Dublin, with the creation of 40 local jobs.
Sustainable building energy test bed opens at CIT
The National Sustainable Building Energy Test Bed facility to examine ideas for future energy-saving products and services in a real environment is now up and running at Cork Institute of Technology (CIT)’s Nimbus Centre.
United Technologies Research Centre Ireland Ltd, in partnership with CIT, established the facility. It is available to national and international commercial entities within the energy space to trial R&D work, particularly within the areas of smart grid, intermittent generation, and demand side management.
Higher-education institutes and researchers, through European Commission-funded research projects, may also use the facility for experimental work.
Less than two-thirds of Irish firms confident their data is safe – study
Only 57pc of businesses in Ireland are confident they could recover all their data should a system failure or downtime occur, new research on behalf of cloud and storage giant EMC suggests.
According to the study, 41pc of businesses believe big-data technology will prove vital in identifying and defending against cyberattacks, yet 33pc of companies don’t have plans to implement big data.
Sixty-seven per cent of survey respondents cited budget as the most important factor for business decision-making, and 58pc cited budget as an inhibitor to big-data adoption as there was no clear business case or return on investment.
Google and Microsoft to block child porn searches on their search engines
Google and Microsoft are taking steps to make it harder and harder for child porn content to be found on their respective search engines.
Both companies have revealed details of a new plan that will see restrictions immediately applied across English-speaking countries, with the rest of the world and 158 other languages in the next six months.
Under the measures, the search engines will implement new algorithms that will block child abuse images, videos and pathways that lead to pornographic content.
Nokia shareholders approve Microsoft’s €5.4bn takeover
Nokia’s shareholders have rubber-stamped tech titan Microsoft’s US$7.3bn (€5.4bn) takeover of the Finnish technology company’s Devices and Services business.
At a meeting in Helsinki last week, the deal was almost unanimously approved, with 99.7pc of shareholders voting in favour of the takeover.
The transfer of Nokia’s Devices and Services business to Microsoft will take place in 2014.
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