Ryanair’s profits may be grabbing the headlines, but down on the ground Ireland’s technology sector continues to be key to the continuing move away from recession. Ireland boasts one of the most tech-savvy workforces in Europe today - over 105,000 men and women are working in the tech sector across a diverse range of businesses - and that skills base represents an increasingly important aspect of the overall national economy.

For those who are slightly long in the tooth such an emphasis on the ultra-modern and the cutting edge can still take a while to get used to. A quick review of just how much things have changed over the 15 years since the turn of the century puts into perspective just how much has changed, and just how quickly it has happened.

Taking Stock

The Hiscox business blog (there’s something that didn’t exist 15 years ago) offers a series of metrics that indicate the quite staggering growth in the tech sector. The Hiscox data describes the state of affairs in the UK, but the story in Ireland is every bit as dramatic.

The headline figure is provided by the total turnover of the top 100 listed technology companies in 2001 as compared with 2015. One of the most dramatic business impacts of digital technology has been the scalability that it enables - the numbers offer a perfect illustration of that fact.

In 2001 the total turnover figure was a sizeable £414 million. Clearly by the turn of the century the tech sector was alive, kicking and doing good business. Just how good that business has been is revealed with the equivalent figure for 2015 - £2.4 billion.

In Association with

Notable Landmarks

There have been some notable landmarks along the way - the launch of web 2.0 in 2005 and the delivery of faster and more powerful processing was one such landmark event. Apple’s launch of the iPhone in 2007 was clearly another.

Apple’s astonishing success in galvanising the consumer market has arguably done more than any other organization in making technology not only functional but also desirable. The rise of the geek inevitably ties into the high prestige - not to say glamour - that Apple were (and still are) able to wrap into their products. Today, smartphones are now the most common means of accessing online resources.

Irish Success

But there has been an even more substantial revolution in more substantive, expressly commercial spheres. Entertainment, games and gaming have all generated vast profits for those able to tap into the zeitgeist, but the move to cloud computing points to the ongoing shift in backroom business activity (for example, one in five of the Hiscox top 100 firms provided cloud services).

At the interface between traditional business activity and consumer engagement are businesses such as Ryanair that are able to streamline each and every aspect of their proposition in a way that suits customers and has a wholly positive bottom line return.

Ireland has done well from the extraordinary shift to the sort of intellectual labour that digital technologies call for. There may be a current imbalance in terms of the number of IT roles in Ireland as against the number of home-grown specialists, but the dependence of the sector on immigrant labour is steadily diminishing.

Not all revolutions are necessarily welcome, but there is little doubt that the digital revolution has proven to be remarkably good for Irish business and for Ireland as a whole. ICT Ireland figures show that over 40% of Irish exports derive from the tech sector.