David Moran, Chief Executive Officer of ChangingWorlds
ChangingWorlds, a spin-out company from UCD’s School of Computer Science and Informatics has been acquired by Amdocs, the US-quoted technology company, for $60 million.
ChangingWorlds was co-founded in 1999 by Professor Barry Smyth and Paul Cotter to commercialise their research into personalisation and artificial intelligence technologies. ChangingWorlds maintains a strong strategic link with the university as its ongoing R&D activities are taking place in NovaUCD, UCD’s Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre.
ChangingWorlds’ technology, combined with the Amdocs portfolio, will enable better customer experiences by allowing mobile phone users to get relevant information based on what they use most, making it easier to navigate the Internet on their phones and reducing the time they spend looking for content. ChangingWorlds and Amdocs share several customers including Sprint, the Vodafone Group and Telefonica O2.
“Amdocs and ChangingWorlds recognise the power of the customer experience and the potential for service providers to further exploit their place in the digital value chain,” said David Moran, chief executive officer of ChangingWorlds. “Both Amdocs and ChangingWorlds will continue to aggressively execute on the shared vision of enabling service providers to offer the most compelling customer experience, to grow revenue from data services and to retain customers.”
Welcoming the acquisition of ChangingWorlds, Professor Mark Keane, UCD’s Vice-President for Innovation said, “The return to UCD from this acquisition will be re-invested in future UCD spin-out companies for the general good of the Irish economy.”
Dr Pat Frain, Director, NovaUCD said, “The success of ChangingWorlds will be an inspiration for academic entrepreneurs who are interested in establishing new ventures to commercialise innovative ideas emerging from university research.” He added, “Such ventures are of critical importance particularly in the present economic climate, where there is an increasing need to generate opportunities for the creation of highly skilled employment.”
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