Cork-based software development and project management company AspiraCon has struck an €250,000 deal with Waterford Technologies. The deal will see the two companies collaborate to develop new features for Waterford Technology’s MailMeter File Archiver product, which allows companies to reduce the storage space on their servers.
AspiraCon has been collaborating with Waterford Technologies for the past three years. Over the course of the yearlong MailMeter project, the companies will develop new features such as Word-based discovery.
‘‘This will immediately allow network administrators, legal or HR personnel to search all documents and files - embedded or not - on their server, for specific terms," said Pat Lucey, managing director, AspiraCon.
‘‘The new functionality has been described as the ‘holy grail of e-discovery systems’ and will increase the momentum of the group’s international sales," said Brendan Nolan, chief executive of Waterford Technologies.
Negotiations for the deal started last December when Waterford Technologies began technical evaluations of a number of international companies.
AspiraCon was chosen from a shortlist of three.
‘‘After evaluating quite a few potential companies, we chose AspiraCon because it had people with the right skills, and they had a fantastic attitude that mirrors our own ethos - a willingness to work hard, a focus on excellent software design, which leads to the user having a positive experience when using the software, and the hunger to demonstrate that Irish hi-tech companies still have the ability to establish a global presence," Nolan said.
AspiraCon’s director of operations, Colum Horgan, said that new functions, developed through the partnership, would include novel enhancements in the product’s integration with SharePoint and MOSS 2010.
‘‘This meets the ever-increasing need to save space by removing duplicate versions of documents while retaining all the benefits of document management under Microsoft SharePoint," Horgan said.
Waterford Technologies has customers in Ireland, Britain and the US. In addition to its headquarters in Ireland, it has overseas offices in Birmingham and California.
The company is in the process of expanding into the wider European market as well as the Middle East and Asia.
‘‘With the expansion of our markets and growth in demand for our existing MailMeter product, we decided to collaborate with another company in developing MailMeter File Archiver," Brendan Nolan said.
Lucey said that Aspiracon had invested significant sums in database and .net development and SharePoint integration. ‘‘We made a decision over a year ago to invest in SharePoint technology because it is a new platform that Microsoft has set up and which it is really promoting.
A lot of companies are putting in Share Point based systems and we believe they will be looking for companies that can deliver and integrate with SharePoint/Moss systems," he said.
‘‘We offer these skills flexibly to other companies via a software development service and it means a lot to us to work with a company like Waterford Technologies and to see how it is breaking into new markets. It is a key client for us, and this deal cements our relationship for the next year and hopefully longer."
