— Photo: Bijoy Ghosh

IRISH CONNECTION: (from left): Leslie Morrison, CEO, Invest Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, U.K. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Arun Jain, Chairman and CEO, Polaris Software Lab, at the signing of an MoU in Chennai on Thursday.

CHENNAI: Polaris Software Ltd. is setting up a banking and financial application certification centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The Belfast centre will be based at the Northern Ireland Science Park in Titanic Quarter. The centre will be developed in three phases. It will begin as a certification centre providing independent quality assurance software testing.

In the second phase, it will turn into a software development and business continuity centre.

In the final phase, Polaris hopes, the centre will be in a position to provide round-the-clock technical support for customers in Europe.

At the end of the third phase, the Belfast centre will be a full-fledged near-shore software development centre and Mercury certified banking and financial application centre.

Arun Jain, CEO and Chairman of Polaris, and Peter Hain, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland of the British government, on Thursday signed an agreement here to facilitate the entry of Polaris into Belfast.

The proposed Polaris' centre at Belfast is assisted by Invest Northern Ireland (Invest NI) with a grant of pound sterling 1.5 million. "This is the first green field software investment by an Indian technology company in Northern Ireland,'' said Mr. Hain.

Addressing a press conference here, the Polaris Chairman said the company had drawn up a pound sterling 10 million three-year business plan for the upcoming Belfast centre, which would be an arm of the company's U.K. subsidiary. Just a little over a quarter of the company's revenue came from Europe, he said.

The Belfast centre was conveniently positioned to serve the clients in Europe, he added.

Northern Ireland has already seen HCL setting up shop in a big way. Northern Ireland, Mr. Hain said, was trying to emerge as a world class knowledge-led and innovation-driven economy by wooing companies in specified areas.

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