Innovative technology attracts US company

Causeway Data Communications, a University of Ulster spin-out company, recently signed a strategic alliance with Patriot Properties of Boston to market innovative technology developed in Northern Ireland to the US market.

A start-up company from the University of Ulster at Coleraine that has developed an innovative system for valuing property has secured a lucrative deal with a United States company to market the product in North America.

With the help of Invest NI's Northern Ireland International Partnership Programme (NIIPP), Causeway Data Communications (CDC) has formed a strategic alliance with Patriot Properties, a specialist software and service provider based in Lynn, Massachusetts. The American company will market and distribute CDC's spatialest appraisal software, the first software to include location as a key part of the property valuation modelling process using Geographic Information Systems technology.

Leslie Morrison, Chief Executive Officer of Invest NI, announced the contract during a visit to the Northern Ireland Technology and Development Centre in Boston. He said that this was another example of how innovative Northern Ireland companies could "achieve international success through taking a strategic approach to marketing".

Adrian Moore, CDC's Managing Director said spatialest had been developed after identifying a weakness in the computerised methodologies currently used in the North American property valuation and taxation assessment industry.

He said: "Hooking up with a United States distributor is a major boost to the company and will allow us to establish ourselves as the leaders in this area of application software development in the lucrative North American property market. This contract gives us a solid foundation for rapid company expansion into other global markets, particularly Europe and South East Asia."

Patriot Properties were impressed with a demonstration of CDC's spatialest when they saw it at an international conference in Miami last year. The partnership with CDC gives them a competitive edge when bidding for key contracts in the highly competitive Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) market.

CDC became a technology transfer incubator company within the University of Ulster in December 1999.

The company focuses on products and service based contract work in the fields of geographic information systems (GIS), telecommunications and internet technologies.

CDC is one of the first tenants of the University of Ulster's Innovation Centre in the Science Research Park at the Coleraine campus.

(SP)