Shortlists for The Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation
Awards have been drawn up – and it was no easy task, writes MICHAEL McALEER
IT WAS A LONG and challenging day for the judges of this year’s Innovation Awards, with 21 company presentations to sit through and discuss, but the resounding response was that it rekindled a belief that Irish businesses can overcome the challenges they face.
The breadth of the shortlisted candidates and their inventiveness demonstrated the determination and innovation that’s often cloaked from view by the overwhelming national concern about the economy.
A look at the final shortlisted companies, ranging from public sector reformers to high-end IT or pharma innovators, offers a window into the depth of talent in Ireland.
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Of the 21 selected companies, Intune Networks have been shorlisted in the Product Innovation category:
PRODUCT INNOVATION:
Intune Networks was founded in 1999 by two UCD graduates, John Dunne and Tom Farrell. It has developed advanced optical networking products that give carriers and internet service providers the capacity to meet growing demands for bandwidth.
An explosion in video content and emerging models for cloud-based services have put a strain on networks that is likely to get worse. Bottlenecks will be alleviated by what Dunne refers to as the “Holy Grail of networking”.
For 30 years, laboratories and universities had identified optical packet switching technology as the way forward but it took Dunne and Farrell to come up with a clever piece of IP that made it commercial and scalable.
Early investors were found in Britain and the US, as their Irish counterparts opted for property over technology.
More than 30 companies and institutions have signed up to use the testbed, including BT, Imagine, EMC, UCC Tyndall, NUI Galway, UCD and DCU. The Government has also invested €10 million towards the build of the Exemplar Network using Intune technology (pictured left).
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