BitFlash rounds out executive team; plans commercial rollout of technology in March

Gaphics engine developer BitFlash has hired a former VP of marketing from Corp to help move the company’s new cross-platform graphics engine from the lab to the market this March. The Ottawa software developer is finalizing its release of the Reflexis Graphics Engine, which brings desktop level graphics to wireless devices and the Internet. ANTOINE PAQUIN JOINS AS CEO OF BITFLASHVeteran Ottawa high-tech player Antoine Paquin has joined BitFlash as CEO effective immediately. Paquin has a long track record of providing executive direction to emerging high tech companies, including headline-grabbing roles with Philsar Semiconductor and Skystone Systems. A company press release indicates Paquin will try to bring the company public "at the appropriate time".Gayle Moss, previously head of marketing for the messaging and applications business unit at Kanata-based Mitel, will work with another new recruit at BitFlash to sell and market the new product. Last October Barry Doucette, a former Ericsson Canada executive with more than 15 years experience, took on the role of VP sales and business development. Nic Desbarats, co-founder and director of product management at BitFlash, says the company is making the leap to a market-driven organization from one that has been R&D intensive over the past three years. "We’re now at a point where we’re going to be releasing (the Reflexis Graphics Engine) in March and Gayle Moss, the new VP marketing, is going to be leading that launch and there after," he told Report on Wireless. While at Mitel, Moss led the marketing strategy for the high tech firm’s IP telephony systems and applications business. She also developed marketing plans for its new IP PBX systems, desktops and applications. Moss, who has 17 years experience in sales and marketing, has held similar positions in telecommunications, systems integration, embedded systems and graphics software sectors. Bitflash will officially launch its Reflexis system at the Wireless 2001 show in Las Vegas in March. The new graphics engine brings fully functional and intelligent applications such as mapping, presentation graphics and CAD to mobile devices. Marketing plan is two-pronged Hot markets for the product will be the mapping side of the location-based services, presentation graphics such as PowerPoint and technical specification drawings like those in CAD programs. Desbarats says the marketing strategy will also focus on the wireless carrier market, in addition to applications developers. BitFlash is already selling an enterprise server that enables applications developers to make graphics-rich content available over various types of operating systems. Desbarats says the content server currently supports 17 different desktop platforms. On the mobile side, the new graphics engine will also be platform-independent, supporting Palm OS to Windows CE. "We’re going to be adding other platforms very quickly because (one of the) other key benefits of our graphics engine and thus of the browser built into it is that it’s very easily portable from platform to platform," he says. "When you’re talking about graphics that’s quite a feat." Devices supporting such applications aren’t wide spread yet. But as more integrated data devices begin to emerge on the market, Desbarats says it will help drive sales of his company’s software. "And so we’re building on what’s out there today and we will support what’s coming out tomorrow," he says. One of the benefits of the graphics engine is that because it resides on the device itself and not on the server, the software is "very small". "(It is) very highly optimized and specifically built from the ground up for smaller platforms, so we don’t need a big robust operating system like Windows or Mac OS to function," he says. There are other graphics companies developing products in this space, including Adobe Systems Inc and Autodesk, but Desbarats says those offerings are either platform-dependent or might support only two platforms. The unique offering of the Reflexis graphics engine is that it can operate on many different mobile and desktop platforms without sacrificing any of the product’s functionality, he explains. "We’re the first company that’s really achieved both the cross platform aspect and the preservation of the functionality and the intelligence of the original content," he adds.

BitFlash rounds out executive team; plans commercial rollout of technology in March

News | 01/22/2001 5:00 am EST

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