A HIGH-tech Belfast company has won an award for innovation at an all-Ireland ceremony.
Intune Networks, which employs 45 people at its office in Belfast, is the overall 'Innovation of the Year' winner at the second annual Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation awards.
The company will receive a communications and advertising package from the Irish Times worth €200,000 (£170,000).
Headquartered in Dublin with offices in Weaver's Court in Belfast, the firm was established in 1999 by Tom Farrell and John Dunne, both graduates of UCD, and employs 120 people, including 45 in Belfast. It also has offices in the US and mainland UK.
The company has ambitious expansion plans and has received over €49m (£38m) from investors to date.
Intune Networks is developing networks to cope with unpredictable traffic demand for internet service providers, while controlling costs.
The advent of online video content and cloud computing has put a strain on networks that has resulted in greater demand and Intune Networks' breakthrough technology Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) will help alleviate bottlenecks across systems.
Liam Nellis, chief executive of InterTradeIreland and chair of the Innovation Awards final judging panel hailed the firm, saying: "For 30 years, laboratories have attempted to achieve what has been achieved by Intune Networks over the last four years."
Intune Networks chief technical officer John Dunne said he was delighted to see the company lift the award.
"It is a fantastic honour for all at Intune and a great recognition for our team of engineers in particular, who have worked for over four years on a networking innovation that we believe will open up the network for application developers," he said.
Portadown-based Kingspan Renewables was named as the winner of the GreenTech category at the awards.
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