Veltig look to make Hub a home

One of the companies gearing up to capitalise on the development of a Digital Hub in Cavan Town say they are excited at the prospect and its potential going forward. International software consultancy firm, Veltig, believe the addition of high-speed internet infrastructure locally can encourage further investment, while also stem the brain drain to larger urban centres.

“I’ve done the commute before, up at half five in the morning and, within 15 minutes, you’ve caught up with the traffic heading for the city. It’s just awful. Why not, if the opportunity is there, work locally and at the same time have a better standard of living?” Veltig CEO and Cavan-native Donal De Paor told The Anglo-Celt.
The cause for optimism is buoyed by the arrival of SIRO’s 1GB broadband. Coupled with plans for the new hub, Mr De Paor says it could prove a catalyst in attracting more foreign investment to the region.
“With SIRO, we can expect to have better connectivity than many of our competitors in London, Australia, California, Chicago. We now have the IT infrastructure and we will soon have the hub, so it’s about where we can take it all from here,” Mr De Paor says.
Last week the proposed Hub received a significant further boost when Cavan-Monaghan Fine Gael TD and Minister for Arts Heather Humphreys announced funding of €100,000 under the Department’s Rural Economic Development Zones (REDZ) Programme. The funding accounts for almost two thirds of the overall cost of the project, a joint initiative by Cavan County Council and CMETB, aimed at nurturing tech-based start-up companies, as well as support existing businesses in the region.
Set to be established at the former Dun Ui Neill Barracks on the Dublin Road, the hub had been identified as a key objective under the Cavan Local Economic and Community Plan.
Veltig, for its part, develops and implements products on the Salesforce cloud-based computing platform. Founded by Corkman Denis Horgan and headquartered in California, more recently the burgeoning tech-business invested in 'Sage Live’, the latest offering from the internationally renowned resource planning software firm of the same name.
As part of that, Veltig themselves are now providing product migration services for others upgrading and transferring from Sage 50 and other products to the newly launched 'Sage Live’.

Team of 10 for Cavan?
With 6.1 million customers worldwide, Sage is the third-largest supplier of enterprise resource planning software, and if Veltig’ role as migration provider is secured, it could see the need for a team of up to 10 highly skilled technicians based here in Cavan.
“We would be competing against folks say in India essentially, but how we see ourselves winning is from a relatively low cost base compared to elsewhere in Europe and North America, our partnerships locally, and a steady stream of skilled graduates coming through. While others may do this kind of service too, we believe we all of that behind us, we can do it a whole lot better,” says Mr De Paor confidently.
He paid tribute to the efforts, not only of the County Council and CMETB in working to establish the Hub, but the Local Enterprise Office and James Fox in working to establish the Hub.
Veltig received a grant from the LEO to set up in Cavan, and Mr Horgan had previously been in discussions with Connect Ireland to expand in Ireland, but Mr De Paor indicated that enthusiasm among all stakeholders to get the Hub up and running and swung their decision to move to Cavan.
A graduate of History and Sociology at NUI Maynooth, having earlier studied at St Patrick’s College, Cavan, Mr De Paor worked his way through the ranks of Sage across California, Sydney and Vancouver, before joining friend Mr Horgan at Veltig.
“We looked at Dublin, we looked at Cork, but when SIRO came along we said, 'hey, why not Cavan!’. There are lots of very talented people here already, the local institute as well, so we met with the ETB and the Council and they have been very supportive.”
CMETB is already currently running a range of IT courses geared towards training participants in Smart Technology. They have also helped to launch Youth2Work in partnership with the GAA, Microsoft and FIT to raise local awareness of emerging job opportunities in tech and related sectors in the Cavan region, and its hoped this too will be of significant benefit to the Digital Hub.
“For the students themselves it would mean they will be trained on the likes of the new Sage product literally before anyone else in the world is. So they will have quite a career of prospects available to them. Its all very exciting,” says Mr De Paor.