Enterprise cloud data management company Informatica, which has recently doubled its headcount in Ireland to 100 people, intends to take staff numbers locally to 250 over the next three to five years.
The company, which has well-established links with Ireland following its $55 million (€44.6 million) acquisition of Irish software firm Similarity Systems in January 2006, officially opened its new European headquarters at Windmill Lane in Dublin on Thursday.
Informatica also this week announced a number of local senior appointments including naming Keith Lyons, its vice president for research and development (R&D), as its new country managing director for Ireland.
The company is the first occupant of 1 Windmill Lane, a new development on the site of U2’s former studio, which was sold to Irish property investment group Hibernia Reit in 2014.
Headquarters
The company has rented two floors of the building on a 17-year lease and will pay an initial rent of about €2.1 million per annum for the space, which occupies 18,000sq ft.
The new headquarters are home to Informatica’s R&D activities, as well as back-office functions such as customer support.
"Dublin was originally an engineering centre for us following our acquisition of Similarity but it has since become a fully-fledged mini-Informatica with marketing, inside sales and lots of back-office functions now here and that has led to a lot of growth," chief executive Anil Chakravarthy told The Irish Times.
The company, which was founded in California in 1993 and went public on the Nasdaq six years later, employs more than 3,500 people globally and has revenues of more than $1 billion (€810 million).
Mr Chakravarthy said the company was in strong growth mode after a period of transformation that has seen Informatica following other traditional tech firms in shifting from perpetual licence sales to subscription-based revenues.
Acquired
Informatica recently raised almost $2 billion (€1.6 billion) in a debt refinancing with banks.
The company, which listed in 1999, was taken private in April 2015 after being acquired by Permira and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Microsoft and Salesforce Ventures also came on board as backers of the company following that $5.3 billion (€4.3 billion) deal.
Mr Chakravarthy confirmed the company is focused on going public again but would not be drawn on when it might do so.
“We believe there is a lot of organic growth for the company but [we] are also constantly on the lookout for suitable acquisitions,” he said.
