Irish Entrepreneur Set to Make Over $900m Following Software Sale to Hewlett-Packard

Mike Lynch, the co-founder and CEO of Autonomy Corporation, is set to pocket over $900 million following the sale of his software company to US giants Hewlett-Packard.

Autonomy Corporation, a company that Lynch built from the ground up, is now regarded as the most successful and largest software company in the UK. The Autonomy software allows for data to be tracked across different sources such as; video, phone calls and emails.

Lynch’s entrepreneurship is associated with Silicon Fen, a region affiliated with Cambridge University in England, which is home to a number of high-tech businesses directly related to biotechnology, electronics and software.

The Sunday times once described Lynch as a favourable comparison to Bill Gates, while the Financial Times described Autonomy as ‘the doyen of European software’.

Born in County Tipperary in the Republic of Ireland, Lynch studied at Cambridge University, and is now a leader in the area of meaning-based computing, i.e. computer understanding of unstructured information.

The terms of his sale to HP, will see Lynch remain in his position of running the business, who has come under criticism for his sale of the company to a big name like Hewlett-Packard. However, Lynch has defended the sale of his company, stating that the deal allows the Autonomy technology to reach more people worldwide.

‘I want to get our technology everywhere, and this deal gives us the resources to do that. It moves our sales force from 300 to 28,000 people. This is a good UK story of a small company that now operates globally’, states Lynch.

Lynch believes that Autonomy and Hewlett-Packard can help each other in the creation of new technology. The Irishman stated; ‘Autonomy will be at the cornerstone of Hewlett-Packard’s drive for new technology, and that was key for me. We wanted to be an autonomous unit.’

Autonomy currently employs 400 engineers in its Silicon Fen base in the UK, with a spokesperson for the company stating that all current employees will keep their jobs.

The growth of the company over the last number of years has been impressive to say the least, with Autonomy enjoying double-digit growth, which saw its revenue rise from £58m in the year 2005 to over £500m this past year.

Lynch’s new aim is to improve computers and make them more intelligent, to aid the 16,000 clients who purchase the Autonomy software. His clients include; the US Department of Homeland Security, NASA, and Procter & Gamble.

Lynch feels that computers are unaware of how people think when he spoke of his new plans. According to Lynch, “The next big step change is to get computers to operate more intuitively”.

Article first published as <a href='http://technorati.com/technology/it/article/irish-entrepreneur-set-to-make-over/'>Irish Entrepreneur Set to Make Over $900m Following Software Sale to Hewlett-Packard</a> on Technorati.