Comments on: Cork - the ideal location for your IT business? http://www.tomrafteryit.net/cork-the-ideal-location-for-your-it-business/ Tom Raftery, social media consultant, speaker, blogger and podcaster Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:12:06 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: John http://www.tomrafteryit.net/cork-the-ideal-location-for-your-it-business/comment-page-1/#comment-104992 John Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:15:10 +0000 http://www.tomrafteryit.net/cork-the-ideal-location-for-your-it-business/#comment-104992 My gut feeling (and it's just a feeling) is that as an IT professional and IT Service company I have much more chance of securing work in Dublin than I ever will in Cork. (by a factor of 5 at least) If I take my business to Cork I am going to spend time and money travelling to Dublin to engage clients. For IT "manufacturers" e.g. software companies, development companies etc Cork may well be a good location. But for service companies Dublin has a vastly larger catchments’ area and an order of magnitude difference in the numbers of companies requiring IT services. Top that off with difficulties with bandwidth prices, comparative cost in living in Cork versus wages and I don't see Cork as a viable location. Lastly, historically economic downturns have hit Cork harder and faster than Dublin and it took Cork longer to recover. <blockquote>“94% believed that the low levels of applications for places on third level IT courses, evident in recent years, could have a negative impact on their ability to build upon the success achieved to date”</blockquote> That figure is probably similar all over Ireland tbh. On the up side the average cost of an IT person is going upwards at a rate of knots. Big wages and contracting rates for all over the next 18 months to two years. On the down side IT people may soon find themselves pricing themselves out of the market. Anyone remember Y2K rates? My gut feeling (and it’s just a feeling) is that as an IT professional and IT Service company I have much more chance of securing work in Dublin than I ever will in Cork. (by a factor of 5 at least) If I take my business to Cork I am going to spend time and money travelling to Dublin to engage clients.

For IT “manufacturers” e.g. software companies, development companies etc Cork may well be a good location.

But for service companies Dublin has a vastly larger catchments’ area and an order of magnitude difference in the numbers of companies requiring IT services.

Top that off with difficulties with bandwidth prices, comparative cost in living in Cork versus wages and I don’t see Cork as a viable location.

Lastly, historically economic downturns have hit Cork harder and faster than Dublin and it took Cork longer to recover.

“94% believed that the low levels of applications for places on third level IT courses, evident in recent years, could have a negative impact on their ability to build upon the success achieved to date”

That figure is probably similar all over Ireland tbh. On the up side the average cost of an IT person is going upwards at a rate of knots. Big wages and contracting rates for all over the next 18 months to two years. On the down side IT people may soon find themselves pricing themselves out of the market. Anyone remember Y2K rates?

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