Irish IT outsourcing firm I.T. Alliance is to create an additional 50 jobs, the company announced. It also said it expects to report annual revenues of €40m.
The privately owned and self-funded company currently employs 250 full-time and 250 contract staff.
I.T. Alliance’s founder and CEO Philip Maguire said that the company hit its target in the last year to grow revenues by 40pc from €24m to €33m.
The company, he said, has carved out a niche in Ireland and the UK as a “tier two service provider” which provides outsourcing services to the world’s biggest outsourcing firms.
I.T. Alliance was formed in 1997 in Dublin by Maguire with just four people to specialise in outsourcing. Following rapid growth it underwent significant cost cutting in 2000 as the tech recession hit.
During this time the company reinvented its business model to become a reliable partner of choice for the big international outsourcing companies. Maguire put the new expansion down to the increasing acceptance of the tier two business model the company is pioneering.
“I.T. Alliance was one of the first global companies to spot a niche in supplying outsourcing services to the major outsourcers,” explained Professor Joe Peppard, director of Information Systems Research at the Cranfield Institute of Technology.
“The big global IT outsourcing vendors are coming under the same cost and margin pressures that forced their clients to look to the market in the first place for the provision of services and I.T. Alliance is filling this need.”
In seeking to combat declining margins, Professor Peppard says that IT outsourcing vendors will not find the solution in themselves outsourcing core functions to low cost countries like India and China.
“While this may be a solution for certain processes such as call centres or software development, many key functions need to be delivered to the client on site, not remotely,” Peppard said.
By John Kennedy
