People in business – Ollie Daniels

In the 40 years since Northern Electric came to Galway around 2,000 people have worked in it or one of its successor companies at various stages.

The operation has gone through many changes since 1973 when it started manufacturing telephone sets and parts for telephone exchanges.

Over the decades manufacturing expanded to include software; new product development and R&D were added; and the site in Mervue became a European hub for finance and customer service, amongst many other things.

Employment peaked at around 1,000 people in the late 1990’s and were scaled back subsequently as the downturn in the IT and communications industries took a heavy toll in the early 2000’s.

Northern Electric became Northern Telecom, then Nortel, subsequently Nortel Networks until the remaining Galway operations were largely taken over by Avaya in 2009.

One man who has been a part of the Nortel story, on and off, for 32 years is Avaya’s current R&D Leader in Galway, Ollie Daniels.

‘Northern Telecom was a great place for a young person to start work in the early 1980’s’ says Ollie. 

‘It offered lots of opportunities for anybody with ambition who was looking for a challenging and fulfilling career.

‘I started in the finance department in 1981 but I soon realised that I was more suited to customer service, or marketing than accounting, and the company encouraged me to explore different roles.

Following stints as a production manager, in customer service and product development as well as couple of years in France by 1999 Ollie led a team of over 170 engineers and R&D staff in Nortel Galway, the UK, France and the US.

At that stage he was recruited by Saville Systems (subsequently ADC, now Intec) to run its Irish operations based in the IDA Business Park in Dangan, close to NUI Galway.

‘Leaving Nortel after 18 years was difficult, but I had acquired lots of skill and experience which I wanted to test in a new environment,’ says Ollie.

‘But perhaps the greatest thing I learnt in Nortel was not to set limits on people’s creativity.

‘While there was a rigorous culture of measuring and managing key outcomes, within that there was scope and encouragement to innovate and improve, constantly.

In 2004 Ollie joined Clare-based technology start up Accendo as CEO before eventually rejoining Nortel in 2007 as global head of multi-media applications.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.