150 jobs to be created in UCD
By Orla Keaveney | Oct 8 2015
[br]Global business analytics leader SAS recently announced the creation of 150 jobs in UCD over the next three years. The €40 million investment will create multi-lingual roles in sales, customer service, data analytics and software engineering. The roles will be based on campus at NexusUCD, the Industry Partnership Centre.SAS was founded in North Carolina University in 1979, and it specialises in big data solutions for businesses. A global company, serving customers in 138 countries, it has a yearly revenue of US$3.09 billion. It currently employs around 13,500 people worldwide, with less than 30 of these in its Irish office. This expansion will increase the Dublin team by six-fold. Over the next few years, it aims to target small to mid-level businesses, which may be aware of the benefits of using data analytics, and the team in NexusUCD will be at the forefront.This announcement helps to ensure the retention of Dublin’s title as the “Silicon Valley of Europe”, despite the recent loss of the Web Summit to Lisbon. It also solidifies Ireland’s position as the leader of data science. Facebook, Apple, TelecityGroup and Zalando have all recently begun plans to build offices in Ireland, purely dedicated to data research and analytics. It is estimated that the data industry could create up to 61,000 jobs in the next four years, and bring in around €27 billion for the Irish economy.Martin Shanahan, CEO of the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) says: “SAS is a highly recognisable brand name in the global software industry and a leading player in data analytics. [Their] decision to locate here will further highlight our country as a centre for big data and data analytics - a key emerging sector targeted by IDA Ireland.”SAS Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer, Carl Farrell, welcomed the Irish expansion: “As a global company with offices all over the world, we wanted to expand in a city as vibrant as Dublin which has such a thriving technology ecosystem.”This is a significant win for UCD in particular, especially due to the university’s recent fall in the QS World University Rankings. Professor Orla Feely, Vice-President for Research, Innovation and Impact at UCD, explains why Belfield was chosen. “University College Dublin has a strong track record of working with business, through a growing portfolio of strategic and mutually beneficial partnerships which can impact the economy and wider society.”