An Irishman who used to work at Digital Equipment in Galway has landed the position of chief information officer (CIO) of semiconductor manufacturer Xilinx.
It has been announced that Kevin Cooney will run Xilinx’s global IT operations from its European headquarters in Citywest Business Campus in Dublin.
Cooney has spent the past 10 years with Xilinx, serving as a senior director of IT and business development for the EMEA region.
As well as running Xilinx’s global operations, Cooney will remain as a director of the company’s Dublin plant.
Cooney’s charter is to continue to build a scaleable global IT applications and technical environment to support the company’s anticipated growth over the next several years, fuelled by mainstream adoption of the company’s flagship programmable logic and system-level solutions in diverse markets worldwide.
Prior to joining Xilinx a decade ago Cooney served in a variety of executive positions with Digital Equipment, in both software and hardware roles.
In his new role, Cooney will report to the chief financial officer of Xilinx, Krix Chellam.
“As a 10-year Xilinx veteran, Cooney brings proven leadership, business acumen and technical capability to his new position at the helm of the Xilinx IT organisation,” said Chellam.
“His appointment was a natural choice for the company at this juncture, given our top priority to define and bring to fruition a robust, scaleable IT infrastructure to support our next decade of growth.”
Regarded as a jewel in the crown of Ireland’s ICT community, Xilinx in the past two years has designated Ireland as its regional headquarters for Europe, which now accounts for 21pc of group turnover.
Xilinx, which makes microprocessors for a range of industrial applications, employs more than 400 people at the facility in Citywest and expects to increase that number to 500 over the coming years. In March 2003 the company unveiled a new €52m extension to its research and development, design and operations centre in Dublin.
By John Kennedy
