Sidero not deterred from growth plans by economic uncertainty

Sidero, an Athlone based software business, plans to expand its operations in Britain following the opening of its second office in Newry, Co Down later this year.

The software business develops and manages software systems for large organisations, including government bodies, telcos, and financial services businesses. Its main market to date has been Ireland but has customers in Britain, Spain and Sweden.

“We’re at that stage where we work out how we establish our presence in other markets. The obvious part is expanding in Britain. We’re working in financial services and that’s the market we intend to target there,” Carmel Owens, chief executive of Sidero, told the Business Post.

Sidero was founded in 2013, as an amalgamation of several pre-existing companies the five founders were involved in, and now has 250 staff. The company is headquartered in Athlone and plans to open an office in Newry, Co Down, later this year.

“We’re software engineers. We’ve got a lot of experience in building big resilient systems. We’re focused on that end to end software delivery and we’re increasingly building systems in the cloud, migrating legacy systems in the process,” Owens said.

“The midlands is part of our identity, we’re increasingly doing more work in Dublin but we’re proud of working with Technological University Shannon and being part of this community.”

The business is an AWS advanced partner and also works with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

“We run and support those systems and our managed services operation is increasing in importance as a result. Increasingly we’re doing app development work as well.”

Owens, who previously held leadership roles in EMC, Sungard AS and Version 1, joined the business three years ago as part of Sidero’s growth plan. Shemus Eivers, formerly of Client Solutions, joined the business as board chair last year. She credited Enterprise Ireland’s support with helping the business to grow internationally.

“They’ve been involved with us since 2014. That’s helped with jobs, growth, and scaling. They’ve allowed us to take on some key members of the team to support that growth,” Owens said.

“It has helped us develop our network. They’ve also provided practical support in terms of talent acquisition. We’d love to take part in some of the formal training programmes and that’s on the agenda for later this year. We are looking at developing new products and product areas as well and they've provided their expertise with that.”

Owens said that the current global economic uncertainty wouldn’t deter the company from its growth plans.

“We want to continue to grow and I’m proud of the team here. The board has set pretty aggressive targets for the year ahead so the goal is to grow and acquire more large scale customers,” she said.

“The customers we have value the expertise we bring and that travels. Despite the current market, it’s all about the growth agenda for us.”

This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland.