Osirium Tech Share News (OSI)

(ShareCast News) - Cyber security software firm Osirium Technologies remains confident of its prospects as it gained new clients during the year, although the pace of investment in its research and development business was slower than expected. Activity levels for the 14 months ended 31 December 2016 were broadly in line with the company's expectations, while administrative costs were lower than previously anticipated. The company had about £3.5m in cash at the end of December.The company, which floated on AIM in April, strengthened its management team as Tim Ager, the former European managing director and vice president of sales at Celestix Networks, a provider of secure remote access and identity management solutions, joined as sales director and Stephen Roberts, who was previously marketing director at Wallix, a privileged access management firm, was appointed as marketing director.However the company said that that revenue growth in the research and development section was slower than expected as it has taken longer than than anticipated to recruit "high calibre talent" to this section.But it maintains that the strengthened sales and marketing management will provide the company with momentum to accelerate trading in 2017 and beyond.Chief executive David Guyatt, said: "Whilst the pace of our investment in some of our core functions has been slower than we wanted, the group now has in place the infrastructure required to increase our revenue growth rate in line with the board's expectations."The board remains very confident in the group's prospects and we believe Osirium's unique proposition is well placed to prosper in the thriving cyber-security market. We are also confident that in the next quarter, a number of new prospects will be converted into contracts and potential channel partnerships formalised."In August, the company won its largest contract to date with a global asset management company and it has gained a broader scope of work with this client as the deployment of its enhanced PAM2 solution, now named PxM, is on track.Osirium also signed a pilot contract with a UK-based contextual surveillance company in October, which by December was fully integrated and operational, while other existing contracts during the year were renewed and several expanded.Shares in Osirium were up 3.17% to 130p at 0808 GMT.