Left to right: Jim Gaffey, president of the Gaffey Group; Richard Geddis, president of TotalMobile USA Inc.; Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle; Garth Morton, senior vice president of TotalMobile; Pat Wingo, AT&T Mobility LLC. Photo by Mike Rast Jr.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle welcomed Consilium Technologies Group of Antrim, Northern Ireland, to Georgia June 25 and announced that the state is to be its first U.S. customer, the latest result of numerous trade missions between the state and the United Kingdom province.

Consilium is creating TotalMobile USA Inc., an Atlanta-based subsidiary, to provide its mobile office software for cell phones and personal digital assistants, or PDAs, to state employees.

The company plans to expand through a partnership with with Atlanta-based AT&T Mobility LLC, a subsidiary of the U.S.’s largest cell phone provider, AT&T Inc., which is already promoting TotalMobile’s products through joint road shows.

Mr. Cagle, who participated in a trade mission to Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital, with Gov. Sonny Perdue in June 2007, said that TotalMobile’s software is to allow state employees to work more efficiently in and outside of their offices.

Garth Morton, TotalMobile’s senior vice president, said the company is to employ 15-30 people in Georgia within the next 18 months.

The company is to use the Atlanta office as a springboard into the Southeast, and is already talking to potential customers in Kentucky, Louisiana and Tennessee.

Mr. Morton told GlobalAtlanta that the mobile device software was developed at the Northern Ireland Science Park, a high-tech business development center in the Titanic Quarter of Belfast.  GlobalAtlanta toured the park during a recent trip to Northern Ireland’s capital examining business and tourism initiatives there.

Mr. Morton participated in a trade mission coordinated by Jim Gaffey, president of Atlanta-based international consulting firm the Gaffey Group, in September 2007.

Mr. Gaffey said Consilium representatives visited Georgia seven times before choosing Atlanta over places like Boston and New York.

“This is really a big win, for them to come here and begin hiring immediately,” he said.  “And they’ve got the collaborative relationship with AT&T Mobility to take them onto the national stage.”

Mr. Gaffey added that he and a team from the Georgia Department of Economic Development and Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce coordinated to promote the state’s educated workforce and local IT companies to Consilium.

Consilium is the second Northern Ireland company participating in the September mission to open an office in Atlanta.  Ballymoney, Northern Ireland-based glass etching company Glass Craft Europe LLC opened a subsidiary in the Georgia capital in March.