From left: Cronan McNamara, ISA chair, Mary Finegan, VP of programme management at Movidius, Brendan Barry, VP of engineering at Movidius, and Paul Sweetman, ISA director. Image: Gary O’Neill
Chip company Movidius was named company of the year at the Irish Software Association’s annual awards, while Storm Technology’s Karl Flannery was named person of the year.
Acquired by Intel in September for a sum rumoured to be in the region of $300m, Movidius is an Irish machine vision chipmaker that gives sight to smart devices made by companies like Google, DJI and Lenovo.
Co-founded by Sean Mitchell and David Moloney in 2005, the company employs 180 staff across its global operations. Earlier this year, it announced plans to create a further 100 jobs in Dublin.
“Movidius is a classic example of a company with advanced technology that needed to wait for the market to catch up to it,” said Irish Software Association (ISA) director Paul Sweetman.
“The company’s core philosophy is that people need to be freed up from their devices – which demand constant attention and interaction – by enabling devices to act more autonomously and require less hands-on instruction from the user.”
Leading the indigenous technology charge
Karl Flannery, business leader, technology enthusiast and CEO of Storm Technology was named ISA Person of the Year 2016.
For over 20 years, Flannery has been firmly committed to advancing the profile and needs of the Irish software and digital technology sector in the national and international arena.
He is currently chair of the Industry Advisory Board for Knowledge Transfer Ireland and is chairing one of the delivery teams for the government’s ICT Action Plan for Jobs.
In 1995, Flannery co-founded Storm Technology. Since then, he has taken the company from a start-up operation to a well respected, profitable company, which focuses on technology solutions for the enterprise based on the Microsoft platform. Storm Technology has a team of over 90 staff and operates out of Dublin and Galway.
The full list of winners at the ISA annual awards are as follows:
- ISA Digital Technology Company of the Year: Movidius
- ISA Person of the Year: Karl Flannery
- Emerging Company of the Year: LogoGrab
- Outstanding Achievement In International Growth: eShopWorld
- Technology Innovation of the Year: KantanMT
- Digital Technology Services Project of the Year: Storm Technology
- Multinational Corporation Initiative of the Year: Accenture Ireland – Women on Walls campaign
- Excellence in Talent Development: Openet
- Outstanding Academic Achievement of the Year: Irish Centre for High-End Computing
