S'pore startup makes global security contest
update SINGAPORE--A local company has secured a spot in the finals of the Global Security Challenge 2008, an annual competition to identify promising security startups across the globe.
Singapore's Hiperware and Armenian company Precision Sensors Instrumentation, edged out three other semi-finalists in the Asian leg of the competition held last Friday. The two companies will join four other finalists from the Americas and Europe on Nov. 13 in London, to vie for the top prize of US$500,000.
Amey Laud, CEO of Hiperware, told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview Tuesday his company earned a nod to the final as "Hiperware's technology addresses a pertinent problem among counter-terrorism agencies, which is timely reaction and intervention against terrorist attacks".
"While countries have invested much in surveillance infrastructure, what is missing is a systematic means to provide a 'big picture' from surveillance feeds and [more] importantly, to do this in a timely manner, no matter how many feeds need to be processed," he added.
Initiated by the London Business School in 2006, the Global Security Challenge is a security contest that aims to bring together security innovators, startups and investors around the world.
A whitepaper from Hiperware describes the company's offering as a middle-ware platform built on Java, allowing businesses to develop, test and deploy software across multiple cores, computers or virtual machines. The technology allows for software tasks to be divided or partitioned across a number of computers, CPU-cores or virtual machines, and coordinates these different tasks to work together.
Hiperware's technology is targeted at various high-performance computing (HPC) or real-time processing-type applications, such as industrial process monitoring, business reporting, business intelligence, scalable e-commerce, science and research, and defense and homeland security.
The Singapore startup's business partners have developed four applications to run on its platform, including HiperSearch, a real-time search engine that provides instantaneous monitoring of information processes, according to a corporate factsheet.
Available as a software-as-a-service model, HiperSearch is targeted at the J-Sox market in Japan and the BPO (business process outsourcing) industry in India. It was built to address the needs of organizations that have significant work around security and compliance.
According to the Global Security Challenge Web site, venture capitalists forked out a total of US$90 million in funds--between July and September this year--to support security startups.
The winners and finalists from the previous two Global Security Challenge contests collectively raised more than US$37 million in new venture capital, angel investments and grants.