About IBM in Ireland

IBM is one of Ireland’s leading providers of advanced information technology, products, services and business consulting expertise. We are dedicated to helping our clients innovate and succeed through the end-to-end transformation of their business models and the application of innovative technology and business solutions.

IBM has a long history in Ireland, having opened our first office here in 1956. Today, IBM Ireland has nationwide responsibilities for sales, marketing and service. Our globally integrated international missions in manufacturing and development operations include a Technology Campus in Mulhuddart, Co. Dublin and software development laboratories in Dublin, Cork and Galway; with a European Sales and Support Centre in Blanchardstown, Dublin.

As one of Ireland’s leading corporate citizens, IBM Ireland provides support for initiatives in three areas: education, environment and employee volunteer efforts. IBM employees are encouraged to volunteer at schools and not-for-profit organisations – with the resources of the company behind them. In 2007, IBM, our employees and retirees contributed cash, technology and expertise to a wide range of worthy causes across Ireland.

IBM in Ireland is made up of a diverse workforce of over 3,000 employees working across a broad range of businesses and locations:

IBM Technology Campus, Dublin opened in 1997 and has evolved from a manufacturing base to include the ever-expanding IT Services market plus Research & Development in Software and Integrated Supply Chain (ISC). IBM businesses operating on the Campus now include; ISC Systems Group, Global Procurement, IT Services, IBM Software, Business Continuity Services & Recovery Services, IBM Wireless & RFID Centre of Excellence and IBM Innovation Centre

The ISC Systems Group is involved in the manufacturing assembly of the IBM System i,p and z server ranges and delivering hardware and software products to our clients across Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas.

Since its inception, IBM Software Group (SWG) in Cork, Dublin and Galway, has carried out a wide range of business functions including: development, product support, and the creation of model-based solutions. It has excellent relationships with Irish Academia and actively involved in many professional organisations and standards bodies. Software Group in Ireland is made up of three main brands: Information Management, Lotus and Tivoli. There is also a team working for Systems Group in the area of High Performance Computing.
Learn more about Software Group

The ibm.com Sales Centre opened in 1996 at Ballycoolin, Dublin, just 98 days after it was first announced. This Centre combines the functions of a typical call centre with the power of the Internet, creating a dynamic direct sales channel for IBM clients. The Centre has become one of IBM's leading European ‘dot.com’ centres, attracting employees from almost twenty different countries to work in its dynamic and vibrant environment. It provides a fast and easy access to IBM products, solutions and business expertise for IBM clients throughout 29 countries in 12 languages.

The Ballycoolin location is also home to IBM Dublin Integrated Delivery Centre. Dublin IDC delivers excellence in effective IT support such as help desk, operations and technical server support, to IBM clients across Europe. It has transformed the way we deliver operational IT service to our clients, by providing server and network operations management, call centre and service management in five languages via the phone, email or web.

IBM Global Services is one of the largest employers of consultants and technical support personnel in Ireland, offering customers of all sizes a broad range of capabilities -- consulting, IT services, hardware, software, technical support, research and financing.

The IBM Global Business Services helps businesses from across all sectors realize the full value of information technology. With consultants and professional staff in more than 160 countries globally, IBM Global Business Services is the world's largest consulting services organisation.

Working with the world's leading global companies as well as the top Irish businesses, IBM Global Business Services provides clients with business process and industry expertise, and the ability to translate that expertise into integrated, adaptive, on demand business solutions that deliver bottom-line business value.

Global Technology Services offers a range of IT services including: Server and Storage, Security and Privacy, Business Continuity and Resilience, Managed Services, Maintenance and Technical Support Services, Integrated Communications Services and End User Services.

Established in 1991, the IBM International Treasury Centre was originally set up as a shared service centre to manage IBM's treasury operations in Europe. Its role has now expanded to become IBM's global "internal bank" providing deposit, loan and foreign exchange facilities to nearly 200 IBM entities in over 50 countries worldwide.

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IBM is establishing an exascale stream computing research ‘collaboratory’ in Dublin. An IBM collaboratory is a laboratory where IBM Researchers co-locate with a university, government, or commercial partner to share skills and resources to achieve a common research goal. A collaboratory allows IBM Researchers the opportunity to pursue research outside IBM’s labs and existing business units, by working with other institutions around the world that have different expertise, environments or access to partners.

While high performance computing today primarily focuses on scientific applications in areas such as physics or medicine, the exascale research in Dublin will focus on how these new powerful computing systems can be applied to solving complex business problems. The research will include both technical and applications research.

For example, the application research for exascale computing will study financial services using real-time, intelligent analysis of a company’s valuation developed from business models using data from investor profiles, live market trading and RSS news feeds. The research will also focus on making sense of the volume of data from social networks to understand rapidly evolving and changing business trends and opportunities.
Learn more about the exascale stream computing research ‘collaboratory’

In 2008, IBM in Ireland and the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) announced an investment of EUR 30 million in a next generation data centre at IBM's Technology Campus, Dublin. This new facility, which is fully owned and operated by IBM, will provide a wide range of new and cost effective IT Services for the Irish marketplace. The centre will also serve as a global hub for delivering IBM Software to clients in 84 countries worldwide.

The data centre is designed using IBM Research energy-efficient green strategies and technology innovations that optimize space, power cooling and resiliency while reducing costs and supporting business growth. Clients using this centre will have access to massive internet-scale computing capabilities, while gaining the cost and environmental protection advantages of IBM's industry leading energy efficiency data centre design and research.

With this data centre opening, IBM is increasing its ability to address surging demand from businesses and governments from around the world seeking to keep their operations safe from disruption. IBM is the world's leader in providing services that help avoid disruption and enable business continuity.
Learn more about the data centre

In 2008, IBM and the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) announced the establishment of an IBM Centre of Excellence for Water Management.

Located in Dublin, the new facility will focus primarily on innovative research and services for monitoring, managing and forecasting environmental challenges such as the movement of pollutants in fresh water, marine and oceanic environments.

One of the Centre’s first projects is a collaboration with the Marine Institute, Ireland on its national research SmartBay project, which is under development at Galway Bay.

SmartBay is a research, test and demonstration infrastructure for monitoring and managing aquatic environmental data such as tidal flow, wave heights, temperature, and phytoplankton via an integrated network of sensors, robotics and computational technology distributed throughout the Bay.

IBM will develop an advanced sensor network, use real-time monitoring technologies, data analytics and next generation content delivery to provide scientists, commercial fishing & aquaculture, monitoring agencies and the public with access to environmental information in a similar way that we forecast and report the weather.
Learn more about the water resource management centre

In 2008, High Performance Computing team is working with universities and research centres in these areas:

Cell B.E. and BlueGene application development, porting/tuning and benchmarking.The Blue Gene applications team provides technical pre-sales bid support and scientific support for Collaborative research. The Team has access to BlueGene L and P hardware in Ireland.

IBM Deep Computing Visualization- a high performance, visual computing middle ware that enables secure and remote scalable graphics on IBM commodity hardware.

IBM Dynamic Application Virtualization which provides the ability to off-load function calls in a compute intensive application to remote high performance computation node

Recent project involving this team:

The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, on behalf of the entire Irish research community, has signed a contract with IBM for the purchase of the first Blue Gene/P supercomputer in Ireland and one of the first in Europe.The purchase has been supported by funding from the HEA under the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions and committments from all seven universities, RCSI, DIT and the Tyndall National Institute.
Learn more about the 1st Blue Gene Supercomputer in Ireland

In 2008, IBM established Europe's first Cloud Computing Centre. Located in Dublin at the IBM Technology Campus, the new facility will serve as a hub that will deliver Cloud Computing research and services to a number of satellite facilities to be built in Europe, Middle East and Africa. IBM experts from these centres will work directly with clients in the region, helping them adopt cloud computing solutions that spur technology research and business development. Click here to learn more about Cloud Computing Centre

In 2007 IBM announced the opening of a new IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) in Dublin, adding to worldwide IBV centres in Australia, China, Netherlands and the United States. IBM’s Global IBV network is comprised of consultants conducting and publishing business research and analysis across 17 industries and five disciplines: human capital management, financial management, corporate strategy, supply chain management and CRM.

The Dublin IBV focuses primarily on global economic development research. It conducts extensive primary and secondary research into the relationship between information & communications technologies (ICT); the economic competitiveness of nations; and how public and private organisations can collaborate on economic development initiatives.

The IBM Institute for Business Value, which has produced more than 150 studies, represents IBM’s substantial commitment to - and investment in - business thought leadership. IBV Research provides industry insight and guidance to CEOs, industry leaders and governments on a diverse range of technology, societal and business issues.

Also in 2007 IBM announced the opening of a new IBM Innovation Centre in Dublin. The new Centre is designed to meet the growing demand from business partners and customers looking to harness IBM expertise in technologies such as SOA, Web 2.0 and POWER 6 architecture. With the opening of this new Centre IBM now hosts a network of more than 34 Innovation Centres around the world.

IBM Innovation Centre, Dublin offers Research and Development expertise to enable Irish start-ups and small to mid-sized companies create leading-edge software & hardware applications. The Centre also provides an entry-point to IBM's Research network, accelerating innovation by providing insights into emerging technologies. It is also home to the IBM European Venture Capital Centre which is responsible for building strong ties with the venture capital community across Europe, allowing it to gain insights into emerging technologies, exchange market trend info, and accelerate innovation.

These initiatives highlight Ireland's position as an integral part of IBM's strategy to operate as a globally integrated company. Learn more about the Innovation Centre and the European Venture Capital Centre

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