Germany

Software Innovation Made in Germany - Microsoft hosts 9 Startups at CeBIT 2008

Carsten Rudolph — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:40:16 GMT

From Business Intelligence solutions to Augmented reality, from Outlook Peer-to-Peer synchronization to a facial-expression-controlled wheelchair. The start-ups we are hosting at this year's CeBIT cover a wide range of solutions demonstrating what is possible on the various Microsoft platforms.

The participation at CeBIT, which is still Europes largest IT show, is part of the offering startups get as a member of the German version of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator program. The companies benefit from the large crowd of 400.000+ we expect this year at the Microsoft booth. Yesterdays's first CeBIT day already brought a lot of attention including a visit by German chancellor Angela Merkel at the Microsoft booth.

CeBIT goes on until Sunday, March 9. Join us to visit in hall 4, booth A26. Startups presenting are

CanControls are experts in digital image processing for advanced man-machine interaction. They demonstrate a commercial wheelchair with a video-based facial expression controller as well as a facial expression based PC control.

e.Consult AG - e.consult’s main customer group are lawyers. They develop and offer online virtual deal rooms for lawyers and their clients, which are already used by more than 25.000 people.

evidanza GmbH - Evidanza develops state-of-the-art Business Intelligence tools. Evidanza’s BIS.Dynamics is the BI-tool for Microsoft Dynamics: fully integrated both on application and database level.

HIGH-DEF Technology GmbH - HighDef is a provider of high-end home entertainment and home automation solutions based on Microsoft technologies. Products include software and hardware products.

metaio GmbH - Metaio develops and markets new solutions known as Augmented Reality (AR). Using this innovative technology virtual 3D-information can be superimposed seamlessly into the real environment at real-time.

Syncing.net Technologies GmbH - SYNCING.NET Technologies is specialized in solutions for synchronizing database applications on peer-to-peer networks. The first product is SYNCING.NET for Outlook®.

ubitexx GmbH - ubitexx is a software manufacturer of management and security solutions for Windows Mobile PDAs and Smartphones. ubitexx is the first to offer system software for 1st deployment, configuration, user rights management and central administration of mobile end devices.

Vioso GmbH offers solutions for projection on non trivial surfaces. With the technology of Vioso it is now possible to do projection on any surfaces without disturbance by color pattern or distortion. The calibration of the projection works by scanning the surface with a standard camera that is connected with a computer together with a projector.

Weblin - Weblin offers the technology to make yourself and others visible on the web as small avatar characters. The technology works as a piece of client software and browser overlay and offers the possibility to see yourself and other avatar characters who are browsing the same website at the same time, offering chat and various other interaction and communication functionalities.

EVCA Venture Capital Forum in Stockholm

Carsten Rudolph — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:29:00 GMT

Last week I attended the European Venture Capital Forum in Stockholm, which Microsoft co-sponsored as part of our cooperation with the worldwide VC industry. Some 300 VC's and financial advisors, mainly from Europe gathered for two days to discuss latest trends in the industry as well as the general situation of venture capital in Europe as well as the US.

Paul Deninger from Jefferies in Boston gave some insights in data, which turned - in my view - out to be pretty promising for the European venture capital industry. Europe, as one example, has only 20% of the US volume in venture capital, but these 20% drive 60% of the volume of venture backed IPOs compared to the US. The number of Euopean IPOs is higher than ever before, except for the year 2000. It was also mentioned that the size and quality of European IPOs matches that of the best US time. With these exit-perspectives, investing in Europe should be really attractive!

The hot topic in general is for sure cleantech investment, with the US clearly leading in that market. (But I guess there is always lots of IT-opportunity in this industry as well) Worldwide cleantech investments will reach $2.5B in 2007.

Thanks to EVCA for a really interesting conference, and a dinner in the perfect setting of the Stockholm City Hall - the place where the Nobel Prize banquet takes place every year.

On a side issue: we also learned that in 2007 the number of mobile phones sold per second was higher than the number of babies born on a global scale - good news for the mobile folks.

Emerging Business Team worldwide: Microsoft Germany's Founder Initiative

Carsten Rudolph — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:18:00 GMT

As we have started more regional blogging here, let me begin by introducing what we call the Founder Initiative "unternimm was.", which works with venture capitalists and promising German start-ups to help Germany's high-tech industry grow. Numbers of new high-tech start-ups have been decreasing over the last years in Germany (not only after the internet bubble), so it is both in Microsoft's business interest as well as it's corporate responsibility to work for a flourishing start-up scene.

We are jointly working with our international Microsoft colleagues and external partners to achieve this goal and feel very happy, when Dan'l brought "a touch of Silicon Valley" to Hasso Plattner Ventures' last investors conference (sorry, article in German only).

Our main work is the "in-depth" support of individual start-ups, providing technical support, help in marketing & sales, or, in some cases, VC intrductions. We are currently supporting 18 companies in our program.

One of our latest addition is Munich based ubitexx, which has been introduced to us by their investor BayBG. Times are over that you need to manually configure all you mobiles and smartphones in your company. ubitexx provides "over the air" central mobile device management solutions for enterprises as well as mobile operators. This speeds up internal processes and provides a much higher level of security. ubitexx has won a number of prizes, among them the highly regarded European ICT prize in 2007 and they have been nominated finalist for Microsoft Partner of the Year award in their category.

We are always looking for ambitious, growth-oriented start-ups that see a significant lever in a partnership with Microsoft. Looking forward to see you!