Spotlight On: Innovative Irish wireless firms: Irish companies sell everything from high-end billing to XRay Scanner entertainment apps

DUBLIN—With a government mandate to innovate around future technology growth areas like information communications technology, a number of Irish companies have responded to the charge with diverse products and services covering everything from antennas to entertainment applications to high-end billing and processing transactions.
The following are brief descriptions of just some of the Irish companies operating in the wireless sector today:
Openet works with Tier One operators to solve complex transaction management issues in real time, essentially being the “money plumbing” for carriers. Operators continually handle high volumes of traffic; Openet is processing about 9 billion records a day for Verizon Wireless, said CEO Niall Norton. Carriers are now preparing to handle between 20 billion and 30 billion in the future. Openet processes those transactions in real time.
FeedHenry is the last mile of a SDP (service development platform), enabling an application to be developed for web, mobile, desktop and IPTV experience, according to Barry Downes, CEO of the company. FeedHenry just partnered with Vodafone Group plc and AskMoby to launch an interactive weather application that offers users custom weather reports around golf, sailing and surfing, and is available as a mobile and social Web application so users can access it from their FaceBook page or their mobile device. “We are the first company to offer such a wide range of application delivery destinations for Web applications. No other company offers a complete channel-agnostic solution across JIL, Betavine, Nokia Web Runtime, iPhone and Android,” Downes said.
NewBay Software offers a white-label service to telecom carriers that enables subscribers to easily create, store, view and share their content. In the battle over who owns the customer, NewBay is betting big that end users will trust operators to store their information in the cloud, said CMO Naappan Arunachalam. The company has contracts with a variety of wireless carriers, including T-Mobile, Telefonica 02, Orange and Vodafone.
dotMobi has transformed from a company that focused on creating the .mobi suffix as a wireless destination to a company that can sell a suite of tools that companies can use to make sure end users are seeing content in the best way, depending on which device they are using to access a company’s Web site. Mobile content is still lagging in part because consumers are unsatisfied with their mobile Web experiences, said Trey Harvin, CEO of the company, which is backed by some of the world’s largest telecom and Web companies. dotMobi recognizes what device the consumer is using and tailors the Web content for that device so consumers can access the content they are searching for.
Cubic Telecom offers Maxroam, an international white-labeled MVNO roaming service geared to travel, hospitality and tourism businesses that offers much cheaper global roaming with a SIM card that can hold multiple local numbers. The company has agreements with 600 operators in more than 200 countries, and can lower roaming charges by as much as 80%.
Zamano delivers interactive mobile applications and services to end users or to business partners, creating fun entertainment applications that can be deployed quickly by operators or directly to end users. For example, the company created an XRay Scanner app (not a real one) that was bought by 30,000 end users in 45 countries in August.
Headway Software helps software engineers write better code.
IMS-Stream is working with Oracle and Ericsson on IP Multimedia System (IMS) services.
catch.fm started out as a song identification service but has transformed into a web platform for radio stations.
ZolkC is software that runs over ruggedized PDA with advanced GPS and audio that solves the problem tourists have visiting battlefields. Because battlefields are often designated as historic areas, installing signs depicting an area of the battlefield is forbidden. ZolkC shows tourists significant battles using the GPS and audio and video functions without damaging the environment.
Muzu TV is a platform artists can use to create their own Internet channel.
Taoglas makes antennas designed for the mobile-to-mobile communications sector, including smart-metering and telematics uses.
Zimbie is a permission-based marketing that allows advertising over Instant Messaging channels.