Israeli high-tech sees potential for success in IST
One of the many Israeli high-tech firms now participating in the Fifth Framework Programme is 'Optibase', which specialises in looking at ways to convert content for different user platforms: 'like running video over networks with real time streaming so you don't lose frames,' explains company vice president Yaniv Garty. Optibase is a public company that has grown since1990 to employ around 200 people in Israel, the USA, UK, France, Japan and China. By 1999 the company enjoyed revenues of US$ 26 million with a net profit of US$ 4 million. It first got involved in the European Commission's Fourth Framework Programme (FP4) late in 1997 with a project focussing on video compressing and transmission technologies. The best thing about the EU Framework programme is the opportunity to work with partners who could eventually become customers. says Garty. Danny Lustiger, Optibase's corporate controller and EC project coordinator agrees: 'The best thing we get from the European Commission is meeting partners in big companies in Europe. What they do is essential for our success. The visibility of partners helped us come out with a product and having committed customers at early stages of the product is valuable.' The company's involvement in FP4 helped it find other partners to work with on three more projects under the Information Society Technologies (IST) sector of the Commission's Fifth Framework Programme. Optibase coordinates one of these, dubbed 'VideoGateway', which aims to develop a gateway between video streaming standards, formats and protocols. At the core of the project is 'MGW', 'a smart media-streaming server', which enables content to be distributed over separate networks by changing audio/video bit rate, resolution and format. Another project, NexTV, is developing technology for an interactive TV platform using MPEG-4 based platforms alongside existing infrastructures, such as cable and satellite. The consortium, led by Philips, includes European, Asian and American based service providers, vendors, universities and research institutes. Optibase provides expertise in MPEG-4 and streaming media and is developing a back-end broadcast server. The company is also mining its expertise on MPEG-4 in the 'Mambo' project (multi-services management wireless network with bandwidth optimisation) looking at video and TV-content on mobile phones. 'Europe is leading the way, not only in deployment but also in implementation to actual technologies,' says Yaniv Garty. '[And European] policy is important for us because we have to define the platforms for these applications. More standardisation and operation for interoperability is the best way to make a success story. The sooner the industry will learn to work together the sooner we'll have one.'