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In the face of the worldwide financial meltdown and rising oil prices, a handful of New Brunswick business executives are reaching out to the rest of the world

When Saint John tech firm Mariner Partners Inc. looked to Europe, it saw opportunity aplenty.

But as a small firm with no global cachet, what it needed first was a way to break in to the market for its signature product in monitoring Internet television services.

Mariner found it in a partnership agreement with Endurance Technology. The British firm is a consultant to television providers. It's a player in the game but not a threat to Mariner's efforts of jumping in.

"We looked at who else is playing in that landscape - who already has good penetration in the European market that are not our competitors," says Mike MacNeil, Mariner's senior marketing director.

That was in March. Mariner, whose software alerts Internet Protocol TV providers to potential trouble with their feeds, more recently formed a partnership with Israeli company Orca Interactive, which develops the software for the set-top box that converts the broadband feed into an image on the TV screen.

Orca has more than 15 European clients from the pool of about 30 IPTV service providers. And now Mariner has a way in, an introduction that it hopes will pay off handsomely.

"If we have someone like an Orca who's already in those accounts "