Northern Ireland ICT company Aepona ‘Up in the Clouds’ with Sri Lankan ICT expertise

Aepona is one of a growing number of British ICT companies that have chosen Sri Lanka in which to base their software development arm.

Companies like Aepona choose Sri Lanka, not just because of the growing strength of its economy but also because of the wealth of young talent here, with proven ability to develop new software to sell to the world.

Since opening its offices in Sri Lanka two years ago, Aepona has expanded by four times and currently employs 140 highly qualified personnel.

Aepona is a multi-national company with offices in the USA as well as the UK where it houses its global HQ. Aepona is a Java-centric software product company with expertise in telco product development. Aepona produces software that provides the interface between operators and users to facilitate transactions – poetically named Mobile Cloud computing.

Some of the challenges faced by Aepona and similar companies in the market include the difficulty in retaining highly sought after staff, much in demand by competitors at home and overseas. This is probably a wider problem for Sri Lanka as a whole – that of holding on to its talented youngsters while the economy gets into gear after many years of attention being diverted elsewhere.

The answer appears to be investing in employees, making sure they get the training they need to develop as all round managers and leaders, not just technical experts. The UK has long had a sound reputation for the quality of its skills and management training expertise and Aepona is no exception in its recognition of the need to motivate employees by opportunities to learn and advance in skills and experience, including that of overseas travel.

The staff at Aepona is key to its success and the relationship between staff in Colombo and in Belfast is carefully nurtured to ensure that all are on board with development requirements for its high octane international customers, including BT, Vodaphone, Airtel and France Telecom.

The relationship between the Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka is certainly looking strong these days. Invest Northern Ireland brought trade delegations here in April and November. Companies from Northern Ireland were delighted with the business contacts they made here and the overall business climate for investment and many further bilateral trade relationships can be expected in the future.