Sunday Business Post - Overseas Property Supplement - April 15 2007
Dublin-based firm Investor First has announced a finance deal worth $80 million for a condo-hotel development in Orlando, Florida.
The first phase of the Emerald Cay project, which is due for completion in September 2009, contains 110 units on two acres, while the second comprises 90 units on 2.56 acres.
The dual hotel and residential development is centrally located within Orlando’s ‘Golden Triangle’, close to Disney World, Sea World and Universal Studios.
‘‘The location would be the equivalent of Jurys in Dublin,” said James Carroll, managing director of Investor First, which sourced both the private equity and mezzanine finance to support the development.
Carroll said that most of the $10 million equity finance was coming from one source, and having that in place early allowed Investor First to then bring in additional investors.
‘‘We first brought in one lead Irish investor and subsequently a number of smaller investors came on board,” he said. ‘‘Subsidiary investors would have come in for around $500,000.”
Carroll said that although the US and, particularly, the Florida property markets had experienced some turbulence in the last few years, high potential opportunities remained for Irish investors.
‘‘In some ways a crash is not a bad thing because it brings a bit of sense into the market,” he said. ‘‘It can be easier to make money in the hard times, because there is not every idiot trying to buy the same land for ridiculous prices.”
Florida remains particularly advantageous, said Carroll.
‘‘America is like a funnel. The baby boomers are moving south.”
Carroll said that the size of the US property market meant it could ride out temporary ups and downs.
‘‘America is the biggest economy in the world. It is surprising how many Irish people seem to equate, in their own heads, a shopping centre in the equivalent of Foxrock in Bratislava with a shopping centre in the Foxrock of Chicago.
‘‘They are just not the same in terms of risk profile. America is the most sophisticated and the most competitive property market in the world, “ said Carroll.
Investor First opened an office in Charlotte, Florida, four years ago. It is partnered with Capital Sales Center, a Floridabased residential sales and marketing company, and the Landsmith Group, which is currently developing more than 700 units spread over various other Orlando projects, in the Emerald Cay development.
‘‘We have developed a relationship with number of local developers, which makes planning, development and entitlement work much easier,” said Carroll.
‘‘America is no different than anywhere else - if you do not have local knowledge to show you where the best place to buy is, and when the right time to buy is, you will take a hammering.”
Investor First recently sourced the Philadelphia Airport Business Complex, a $33 million industrial and office site, for the Irish development group Castleway Developments.
Monday 16 April 2007
Dublin firm involved in $80m Orlando scheme
Glandore Business Centres opens new €30m Dublin facility
Sunday Business Post - Done Deal - April 15 2007
Irish serviced office facilities provider Glandore Business Centres has invested €30 million to purchase, renovate and furnish its newly opened Fitzwilliam Hall centre.
The centre now offers 30,000 square feet of serviced office space and conferencing facilities in Dublin’s city centre.
The landmark Georgian building, which was previously owned by Bank of Ireland, is at the entrance to Fitzwilliam Place and overlooks the Grand Canal.
The property went on the market in 2003, and the purchase was completed in May 2005.
Refurbishment work, carried out by PJ Walls, began in June 2005 and was completed in May 2006.
The €30 million outlay is comprised of €22 million for the purchase of the property and €8 million for the refurbishment.
Michael Kelly, managing director of Glandore Business Centres, said the building was a perfect fit with its requirements.
‘‘It has a quality location, almost on Stephen’s Green,” Kelly said. ‘‘It is also a high quality building and the layout suited our purpose.”
The Fitzwilliam Hall centre offers serviced and virtual office space which includes mail and messaging handling, reception services and office support.
Costs such as property rates, essential services and insurance are covered within the monthly charge.
The building is now 90 per cent occupied and has the capacity for up to 250 work stations.
‘‘Our service is particularly attractive to small or medium-sized companies, as they can share services rather than having to provide them themselves,” Kelly said.
‘‘For example, they can hire a meeting room for an hour as opposed to having a meeting room sitting there except for two meetings a month.”
Kelly said the investment included a €1 million spend on IT systems.
‘‘We have Cat 6 cabling, a state of the art data centre and internal IT support and internet connectivity at whatever level you want,” he said.
Glandore Business Centres was founded by Kelly in 2001.
Turnover for 2006 was about €4 million. The company employs 17 staff and also operates facilities at 33 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2 and Arthur House in Belfast.
Kelly said a fourth property, in the Dublin area, was currently under consideration.
Monday 9 April 2007
Stars of the mini screen
Sunday Business Post - Media & Marketing - April 8 2007
Eamon Dunphy, George Hook and Tom Dunne have all answered the call of the networks and are starring in television shows produced specially for mobile phones, writes Dermot Corrigan
Irish mobile phone networks are now offering a variety of original TV content that users can watch on the latest mobile handsets. However, opinions differ across the sector as to how the dedicated 'made-for-mobile' content space will develop.
O2, Vodafone and 3 have all produced and broadcasted dedicated mobile TV content for their users in the recent past. Most of these shows are fronted by well known personalities, and they generally feature entertainment or sports content.
David Riley, Head of Entertainment with 3 in Ireland, said: "We see a gap in the marketplace particuarly for compelling personality-driven TV content, Football and music are two of the strongest content areas."
3's dedicated mobile TV programming includes music show The Hive with Today FM presenter Tom Dunne and Eamon Dunphy's Last Word on Football. The Hive is a fortnightly music magazine-style show, featuring live performances and interviews from Irish and international bands, gig guides, album reviews, and a download music chart.
Dunphy's Last Word on Football is a twice-weekly programme where the controversial pundit gives his characteristically forthright views and predictions on English Premiership developments and the other football news of the day. It is filmed on Thursdays and a preview is available for download on Fridays. The actual 15-minute TV show comes out on Monday, when it is streamed.
O2’s TV mobile specific TV programming continues the sporting theme. Rod O'Callaghan, Head of Entertainment Services with O2 Ireland, said the company launched The Snug with George Hook and Brent Pope in the run up to the Six Nations rugby championship. This was a pre and post-match analysis programme for rugby fans available on I-Mode handsets and also on O2.ie.
"We also offered Brian O'Driscoll's Six Nations diary which was available on I-Mode and O2.ie exclusively," said O'Callaghan.
Vodafone is not as confident about the potential success of made for mobile TV content in the Irish market. When they launched their 3G service in November, 2004, it included a free-to-view TV show called Access Music TV with Dave Fanning.
This was a 15 minute package of highlights from Fanning's back catalogue of music television programming, with the RTE DJ providing a linking voiceover.
"We tried it and it worked very well initially for us," said Sarah Chapman, Head of Content Services with Vodafone Ireland. "But when we added access to music TV channels such as The Box we found that customers prefer the usability and variety of programming that was available within that mobile TV offering, so we did not continue with the service."
Chapman said that Vodafone have no plans at present to produce any more original content for distribution over their mobile network.
"We try and play to our core strengths," she said. "We have found mobile TV customers want a large channel line-up, and partnering with somebody like Sky makes the overall customer proposition the best it can be."
Vodafone's mobile TV packages include the Sky News & Sports Pack, Sky Entertainment Pack and Sky Music packs, as well as Premiership football highlights. O2 and 3 also provide a variety of existing television programming, which is adapted in-house for viewing on a mobile phone screen, including news, sport, weather and comedy shows. Meteor do not currently offer any made for mobile or existing TV content.
O'Callaghan said that O2 were observing the market closely to see if customers prefer made for mobile content over conventional TV programmes.
"We believe there is scope for both original and existing TV content," he said. "We are currently conducting a mobile TV trial in the greater Dublin area. This is broadcast TV on mobile, as you would see it on TV at home. 350 customers are trialling it at the moment on the Nokia N92. We will be in a position to compare the results at the end of this trial."
The networks declined to give out specific information on the download numbers of their made for mobile TV offerings, however both 3 and O2 said they were happy with the take-up from users.
"Usage figures are commercially sensitive however the demand we have seen so far for these services is extremely encouraging and it continues to grow as customers become more familiar with these services," said O'Callaghan.
Riley said that more than half of 3's Irish customers watch TV content on their mobiles.
Both O2 and 3 are happy to press on and continue to commission and offer made for mobile TV programming.
"We have seen a significant increase in the uptake of these services and this has been encouraging," said O'Callaghan. "As technology evolves more applications will become available. We will continue to explore the area of content and will assess further opportunities as they arise."
"3 is looking at a number of different opportunities at the moment," said Riley. "I think the entertainment space on mobiles is going to develop greatly. TV made for mobile is a strong success story."
At present most mobile TV in Ireland is viewed 3G handsets (3, O2 and Vodafone) or I-Mode enabled handsets (O2). Last September ComReg awarded special licenses to O2 and 3 to broadcast television over a competing technology to 3G called Digital Video Broadcasting over Handhelds (DVB-H).
Made for mobile TV content is generally offered at no extra charge to both bill pay and pre-pay subscribers. Users can be asked to pay for existing content. For example a weekly subscription to Vodafone's Sky News Channel costs €1.99, while watching a Little Britain or Fr Ted clip on a 3 mobile costs 49c.
The mobile providers typically use small independent production houses to produce their made for mobile TV content.
For example the Dunphy football and Hook rugby shows are produced by Random Thoughts Media, a Dublin based digital media company. Ballywire Media and Videos On The Net are two other independents who provide televisual content for O2.
Wednesday 4 April 2007
Rise of the green machine
Sunday Business Post - Computers in Business - April 01 2007
Technology vendors are promoting machines which are friendly to the environment but which can also save money, writes Dermot Corrigan.
Energy efficiency is the phrase on everybody's lips today. On a global scale, there are sweeping climate change announcements, while here the Irish government has introduced the 'Power of One' initiative to try and persuade Irish consumers to use less energy by doing simple things such as turning off the lights when you leave the room or only using the dishwasher when it is full.
Big technology vendors are aware of the way the wind is blowing and have introduced a number of new energy efficient servers and PCs. These vendors are also aware that, while Irish businesses might care about the environment in theory, they are generally more worried about their bottom-lines.
Hence the introduction in recent years onto the market of products which ensure that purchasing decisions can be both environmentally conscious and economically shrewd. The latest energy efficient servers and desktops consume less energy and also cost less money.
"The economic reasons for adapting energy efficient technology now far outweigh the environmental reasons," said Brian Kavanagh, Primergy product manager with Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "The economic barrier that was there in the past has been taken away, where if I wanted a green PC well I was going to have to pay a premium. Now the costs involved are actually reduced because a green PC is more efficient than a normal PC."
Richard Barrington, head of public policy for Sun Microsystems in Britain, said that businesses which purchase energy efficient technologies generally fall into three camps.
"Some people think of their corporate reputation and are interested in energy efficiency in terms of climate change, these are your BTs or Skys of this world," he said. "A much much bigger group of people are buying energy efficient because energy is costing more and more and people are looking at their bottom line and saying we want to do more with less. Then there are third group of people, including a lot of our big corporate customers, who are running out of space, or cannot get enough power into their data centre."
There are a number of factors which have fallen into place to tilt the balance in favour of energy efficient solutions. The first is that global energy prices have risen sharply.
"What has driven this over the last few years is utility expenses have shot up worldwide," said Eddie English, of Dell. "Probably in the last three to four years on average energy costs have gone up by about 20 to 25 per cent. A lot of people have arrived at a situation where they have to do something because their energy costs are too high."
Meanwhile, the IT equipment used by organisations has become much more powerful and requires a lot more energy to run.
"As electricity costs are increasing, power consumption on modern machines is increasing as well," said Mike Hughes, Windows client manager with Microsoft Ireland. "A PC today needs four or five times as much power as a PC would have a few years ago."
A third reason which has lead Irish businesses towards energy efficient solutions is that they are now using a lot more physical IT infrastructure than in the past. Organisations using data centres, especially, have seen their requirements shoot up.
"Storage requirements are growing phenomenally, up to 50 per cent per year," said Gavin Jones, business development executive, energy & utilities industry with IBM.
The combination of all these factors has placed energy efficiency clearly on the agenda of anyone charged with making IT purchasing decisions in Irish organisations. It also means that managers should consider the 'total cost of purchase' of a piece of IT equipment, rather than just looking at the sticker price upfront.
"Businesses should look the costs down the line," said Kavanagh. "If you are saving €100 on a PC up front it could be costing you a lot more over five years. I think Irish customers are starting to see that they should not always just go for the cheapest upfront."
The server and data centre space is where the highest energy costs are generally found. Consequently this is where the greatest savings can be made by introducing energy efficient technology, and manufacturers and vendors have targeted energy efficiency as a major marketing point for their products.
One metric that server manufactuers are keen to showcase is the 'performance per watt'.
"In the energy efficient servers we are talking about a 25 per cent improvement in terms of performance per watt," said Dell's English. "A regular server is probably running round about 320 or 330 watts. An energy efficient server, with specifically configured processor and memory, will run at around 260. Not alone does it use less power, but it also performs the transaction so much faster."
English said that this translates into significant cost savings.
"It depends on the cost of utility bills in your country, but in general what we are seeing is about $200 or $220 savings per server, per year. That is fairly considerable when you take into account that a large data centre could have a couple of hundred, if not a couple of thousand servers. You are talking real tangible benefits."
Energy efficiency savings are not confined to organisations with large data centres. Savings can also be made in organisations which are running PCs and laptops.
"Vendors are looking to differentiate themselves in these markets, and it is an advantage if they can say they are greener than others," said Hughes. "For example there are the Energy Star ratings. If your PC is energy star compliant you have to meet certain power usage levels. If your machine is energy compliant that can save you €50 a year."
The rising energy costs focused minds within R&D at the major IT manufacturers to develop technology which used less power. Sun Microsystems' latest servers use 'CoolThreads technology', which Barrington said cuts power consumption by 30 per cent.
Barrington said that this did not mean working harder, it meant working smarter. One intelligent deployment of existing power usages is to ensure that processors used their time more efficiently.
"Basically a computer processor does one thing, and then it waits either for another command from the user or for the memory to return information," he said. "So what we have done is build a computer that every time that processor finishes a job and it is waiting for something else, it starts another job. It can actually do 32 things at once."
"Because of that we have been able to increase the clock speed, make the computer go faster and faster, without using more energy and producing more heat. These processors use about half of the energy of traditional processors."
Dell has introduced their ‘Energy Smart’ technology into both desktop PCs and PowerEdge servers. Hughes said that the new servers can deliver up to 25 per cent greater performance per watt, while reducing power consumption by 20 per cent, compared to industry standards.
Another advantage of energy efficient solutions is that they can play a role in keeping replacement and repair costs down.
"The hotter things are the more inclined they are to break down," said Kavanagh. "If you reduce the temperature by ten per cent you can double the lifetime of the mechanical components within a server, which reduces the total cost of ownership of that box."
Other significant costs for organisations which require a large amount of IT machinery are air conditioning and cooling systems. Dell estimate that 40 per cent of the total power usage in a data centre goes into chillers and air conditioning units.
"Not everyone understands that one of the bigger expenses in a data centre is running your air conditioning units," said English. "A server that is consuming less power is going to be generating less heat, so you can crank down your air conditioning and chilling units and save you a lot of money."
A number of the big server manufacturers have introduced tools which allow customers to see how much energy they might save with intelligent technology purchases.
Sun have developed the ‘SWaP’ (Space, Wattage and Performance) metric. This assesses the efficiency and effectiveness of rack optimised server deployments in a data centre.
Potential customers can use the Sun website to perform the calculation (SWaP = performance / (space x power)) and compare results from different systems offered by each vendor they are considering.
The Dell website features a similar gizmo that allows interested individuals to see how much they can save by harnessing the energy efficiencies of Dell products including laptops, servers and other data centre technologies.
Consolidation and virtualisation also play a key part in adding to an organisation’s IT efficiencies. By consolidating all their IT requirements onto fewer, more efficient servers, businesses can make substantial savings.
"Consolidation and virtualisation play an absolutely massive role in conserving energy," said English. "We have seen some serious advances in hardware over the last year. Some customers have been able to go from a ratio of five or six to one. I myself have seen instances where folks have been able to go from ten machines down to one."
"Other things to look at are things like power supply, which historically has been horrendously inefficient," said English. "In our latest servers we have the efficiency rating up to 90 per cent."
English also said that scalability is another area where organisations can make big energy efficiency inroads.
"Historically if you bought a mainframe you bought it with a lot of upgrade space so your business could grow into it," he said. "Dell is trying to allow folks to buy what they need for now, and then you can add on scalable blocks as they are required."
The nature of energy efficiency savings mean that everyone from the largest enterprise to the smallest operation can benefit from efficient technologies.
"Almost any business can benefit from energy efficient technology because even if you have a small business you are still talking about the bottom line costs of running each machine," said Barrington.
Hughes said that one reason why larger organisations turn to energy efficient technology is that individual staff do not always do as much as they can to help keep utility bills down.
"If you are a consumer, you are responsible for your electricity bills, so you are probably more aware of turning your machine off or not leaving the machine running," he said. "In your own house your automatic reaction is to switch it off. Small businesses are probably more aware of their energy costs as well, but if you go up into larger organisations somebody else is paying the electricity bill, so you do not automatically think about saving energy."
Organisations which are concerned about energy efficiency can also turn to software solutions.
Hughes said that the recently released Microsoft Windows Vista operating system features the ability to ensure that unoccupied machines are not left powered up.
"The most important thing from the power consumption perspective is the ability to make the machines sleep," he said. "If you take a laptop running Windows XP, when you put it to sleep it maybe took one or two minutes to come back to power again. From a usability point of view that is a poor experience, so people will just leave it running. Vista can effectively put your PC or laptop to sleep in about two seconds and bring it back to resume in about two seconds as well.
Hughes added that Vista can allow IT managers to se power settings for individual machines.
"If you want individual machines to power off after five minutes of no-one touching the keyboard, you can set that up and apply it right across the organisation,” he said. “Or you can blank the screen if no-one is using the machine."
The operating system can also adjust the energy usage of each individual machine so that only the required amount of power is used.
"Hardware and processor manufacturers have built in more intelligent processors, so depending on what the PC is doing at the time they can build up or down the power which the processor itself is consuming," said Hughes. "So the operating system can work with the processor, depending on what the user is doing."
Hughes said that optimum utilisation of these features could lead to considerable savings on each typical desktop system.
"There was a study done by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in the US which said there were savings of €48 per machine per year if you use all these policies together," he said.
Some businesses specifically ask staff not to power down their machines at night, for instance so that they do not miss out on important updates, such anti-virus software upgrades.
"Larger organisations may have policies where they put patches on their machines, and they may encourage staff to actually not switch their machine off," said Hughes.
"This is where automatic software settings become more and more important, because you are effectively taking the user out of the equation."
The 'green' motivation for purchasing one product over another cannot be discounted completely. All of the major IT vendors have reacted to their customers' requirements by introducing environmentally friendly practices.
Energy efficient technologies now sit alongside other responsible practices such as multi-pack solutions which save on packaging materials and supplying less manuals and user instructions with bulk orders.
"It is up to the customer, but in the majority of times they will go for it, as there is no additional cost associated with a service like that," said Kavanagh.
Kavanagh added that other environmentally friendly policies of the large IT manufacturers include reducing the use of dangerous chemicals in machine manufacture, increasing the ease of recycling equipment, cutting the fuel consumed by delivery vehicles and using environmentally friendly packaging material.
Jones said that energy efficient purchasing decisions can be publicised by businesses to impress their customers.
"Companies want to be seen as being custodians of the environment," he said. "Also employees like working for companies that are environmentally conscious, so it helps keep good people who want to make a difference."
Sunday 1 April 2007
Country club development north of Lisbon
Sunday Business Post - Property Section - April 1 2007
Located at the Obidos lagoon, Quintas de Obidos is a country club development north of Lisbon on Portugal’s Silver Coast, which is on the market with prices starting from €600,000 for 1.3 acre plots and from €1.4 million for finished five-bedroom villas.
The development, which is aimed at the higher level of the market, has its own helipad, a country club with spa and swimming pools, and has an equestrian centre designed by leading Irish show jumper Jessica Kurten.
Prices for complete properties at Quintas de Obidos, which include the land, five-bedroom villa, outdoor pool and all landscaping, range from €1.4 million to €1.8 million.
The scheme comprises 79 five-bedroom villas, each standing on at least an acre of eco-friendly gardens with olive trees and biological lakes.
Buyers can choose from one of 16 traditional Portuguese architectural designs. Eight of the 79 plots have already been purchased by Portuguese and international investors.
Quintas de Obidos is a five-minute walk from the beaches and estuary of the Obidos lagoon.
The ancient walled town of Obidos, with its distinctive white houses trimmed with touches of blue and ochre, dates back beyond the 13th century.
Portugal’s Silver Coast region, Costa da Prata, is situated 40 minutes north of Lisbon airport, and stretches from Torres Vedras to Caldas da Rainha.
A new motorway from Lisbon has improved access to the region, which will soon be home to two five-star hotels.
According to the developer, Silver Coast property prices are about 30 per cent lower than equivalent properties in the Algarve, and the area had seen property price appreciation of about 40 per cent in the last three years.
The fully-equipped equestrian centre is expected to draw strong interest to Quintas de Obidos.Kurten, who is a high-profile showjumper, is heavily involved with the project as an ambassador and consultant.
Keeping a horse at livery here will cost about half the equivalent rate in Ireland, and Kurten plans to bring other professionals to Quintas de Obidos for training and schooling.
Golf is also expected to be a major attraction for the development, which is surrounded by the Praia d’El Rey and Bom Successo golf courses.
The Praia d’El Rey is rated the number one course in Portugal by Golf World magazine.
The Estoril, Quinta daMarinha/ Oitavos and Penha Longa courses are also within a 45 minute drive of Obidos.
