It was God's personal endorsement of Padraig Canavan's gradual rise in the firmament of the world software business.
From its headquarters in Patrick Street, Canavan's company Singularity now oversees 220 staff in Derry, Belfast, London, Hyderabad (India), New York and Singapore.

In terms of excellence, Singularity is now among the top 20 of the 200 or so niche software companies it considers its direct competitors.
Its range of product partners includes Microsoft and IBM and, in a recent report by market analysts Gartmore, Singularity was singled out as the one to watch in the 'visionary' category.
For Canavan, it was just the latest confirmation that they are 'above the radar' on a global level.

"We're up there - battling it out with the big US players," he said.
The product

Canavan learned his trade as a programmer at financial services software specialist Braid Systems in New York.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Singularity's original software products focussed on the financial services industry.
Since then, however, the company has broadened its scope, and its core product is now a business process management (BPM) solution which can be tailored and applied across a range of industries.

The core product, 'Singularity Process Management', while potentially universal in application, is currently deployed mainly in three areas: capital markets, government and the telecoms sector.

An example of just one application is the use of Singularity Process Management in serving the deregulated communications sector in the UK.
Since British Telecom is now required to offer third parties access to its phone line infrastructure, many companies can now offer phone lines and broadband access as if they were a 'mini-BT'. These companies are the communications providers - CPs.

"One of our products is designed to help the CPs manage their client relationship, on the one hand, and also help them interact with BT's infrastructure, to enable those clients, on the other," Canavan said.
Infrastructure

Large global tech companies thrive in 'cluster zones' around the world where, from their office window, they see a horizon dotted with their largest competitors, and also their largest customers.

For a software company, Derry is therefore remote from global markets, and closeness to the marketplace can be achieved only by having international product partners, or international offices.

"The north-west is very short of private sector companies. The one thing we don't have here is customers," Canavan said.
This means that mobility is crucial.

If Derry and the North-West hopes to attract further hi-tech players from the US and abroad, then we need better flight access to London. Canavan pointed out that a Derry-based businessman flying to London from Eglinton currently gets there at 11.30am - "just in time for lunch", as opposed to making it for a breakfast meeting.

The sparsity of flights means also that incoming visitors are 'trapped' here for a long day, rather than being able to fly in, have their meeting and promptly depart.

For Canavan, a connoisseur of Derry's restaurants, the solution to the problem is 'a no-brainer'.

"We feed them. Repeatedly," he said.

In other respects, our infrastructure is at least as good as many locations which are quite successful in marketing themselves as software centres, Canavan pointed out.

Nonetheless, some glaring problems with our roads network do remain.
"We need a dual carriageway all the way to Belfast, as a minimum," he said.

It's all about gaining the 'critical mass' that will give Derry the feel of a high-tech centre, Canavan believes.

"We need more hi-tech companies here, to create more vibrancy," he said.
Canavan pointed out that even Dublin has a busy feel to it that reflects the higher number of tech firms, and London is at a higher
level again.

Brain drain

For the moment, the lack of this vibrancy means that the 'brain drain' of Derry's talent to foreign centres has not been stopped. For the north-west's graduates, the hi-tech business still cannot offer a long-term career perspective. Young programmers looking around town simply do not feel confident in starting to build a life here.

"I read an article recently where someone was saying that the opportunity for keeping young people in the town has passed - for another generation," Canavan said.

While many of our people gravitate to the higher-energy clusters in Dublin and London, both are nothing compared to the mecca of technology companies worldwide - California's 'Silicon Valley', Canavan said.
Is it possible, then, that as Singularity builds its client base stateside, Padraig Canavan might - as the centre of gravity of the company - find himself relocating to the USA - at least for part of the year?

"That's a possibility. It's something we have given consideration to, depending on how we decide to grow the company," he said.
It is a measure of how seriously this has been in his thoughts, that Padraig admits he has discussed the subject with 'she who must be obeyed'.

"It's something that my wife would be quite happy to do," Canavan said.
Leadership for Growth

Canavan is currently completing a 'Leadership for Growth' course which will take him for three 1-week visits to Palo Alto, California this year.

In the company of 30 chief executive officers of other software companies, he is studying at Stamford University Business School.
"I'm finding that very illuminating. Things happen in Silicon Valley at a pace which outstrips everywhere else.

"People go there and find countless jobs open to them, both at large companies, and with new smaller companies opening every day."

The work pressures for companies across the US, trying to sustain their global lead, are more intense that in the European situation, Canavan said.

"Working there can be quite bruising and brutal," he said.
The City Factory

A key factor affecting Singularity's competitiveness is the cost of a software engineer in Derry, compared with the other high-tech hotspots in emerging nations such as India.

Ironic, then, that Singularity is located in the City Factory, which was the backbone of the city's shirtmaking industry before that business migrated to lower-cost locations in India and Indonesia.
Canavan concedes that his business now faces challenges similar to those that, in the sixties, ravaged Derry's textiles industry.

It is a hard business fact that a software guy in Hyderabad is paid 10% of the wage of a software guy in London - but is educated and produces work to the same high standard.

Not only are Indian programmers every bit as competent as their UK cousins - there are plenty of them.

"If you wanted to, you could employ an office full of doctorates in India. They produce over 100,000 IT graduates every year."

So how does Derry insulate itself from such a steep cost differential?
'Derry's advantage'

The situation is not as tragic as it was for the shirtmakers, Canavan said.

Derry's advantage lies in its global position, and its cultural affinity with the UK and the US.

"The essential thing for Singularity is that it is headquartered here, and its strategic thinking happens here. Enterprise Ireland are at the stage where they are saying 'we have to have companies where the thinking and the decisions happen in Ireland'.

"That is their primary objective now," Canavan said.
The cultural affinity with anglo-saxon markets cannot be underestimated, and is underlined by the fact that large Indian software companies such as TCS are increasingly making predatory moves to acquire subsidiaries in the English-speaking world.

"TCS has nearly 100,000 software engineers in one company, and they are achieving 30% profitability on turnover of $2-3bn per year.

"They - and all the big Indian offshore companies - are now looking to buy into the West," he said.

"That is a relatively new dynamic in the software environment."