Message from the Marketing Manager

Welcome to another edition of Critical News!

Dear all,

The end of the year is fast approaching and once again one can not avoid a feeling of satisfaction when looking at Critical's achievements so far this year. The company continues its global growth, notably in Eastern Europe with the establishment of a new office in Bucharest (Romania); with the strong push of Critical Links into the US, India and China and with increased business generated by its UK subsidiary. This growth is also reflected in terms of the company's employees and revenues that continue to increase at a fast pace.

Critical is positioning itself as a global brand and working hard to increase its brand awareness throughout the world. As a result, some changes are already taking place in terms of the Marketing & Communications department and a reorganisation that will bring this area closer to Business Development.

We are eager to continue winning new business and to stimulate new ideas to keep Critical on the success route. At Critical everyone is committed to success! Success is part of the company's culture and history and we plan to keep it that way.

Hopefully this newsletter will give you a better insight into our company's new projects and aspirations. Feel free to drop us any suggestions and opinions.

You'll hear from us soon.

Rui Melo Biscaia

Critical Software supports the development of a mine counter measures unmanned vehicle for the UK MoD

In September, Critical Software, through its subsidiary in the UK, signed a collaboration agreement with Atlas Elektronik UK, so joining a consortium of partners to supply the UK MoD with a new mine sweeping system.

The consortium led by Atlas Elektronik UK will deliver a technology readiness demonstrator (TRD) for mine counter measures (MCM) known as FAST (Flexible Agile Sweeping Technology) that will ultimately enable the UK MoD to put a Combined Influence Sweep (CIS) replacement into service using FAST technology.

By 2009 this project will provide a fully functional MCM Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) demonstrator system, based on a 9.5m rigid inflatable boat, with quantified and validated performance through an agreed trials and evaluation programme. The project will demonstrate quantified minesweeping performance and effectiveness against mine threats in a realistic scenario as well as deployment, recovery and capture of a FAST USV from an MCM vessel.

Critical Software's role, supported by its parent company in Portugal, is to extend the capabilities of FAST in the area of Collision Avoidance technology, therefore enhancing the value of the TRD, and giving an important contribution to the expected technology transfer from industry research.

» Back to the top «

Critical software has signed a contract with ITIJ for Project Management Office (Project CITIUS)

One of the measures concerning the Portuguese Government's Technological Plan is the dematerialization of judicial proceedings so that the legal procedures in courts and registry services can be managed exclusively through technological devices.

Both citizens and companies will then have an easier access to the judicial system and services thus improving their working conditions and efficiency levels. Within the judicial courts a program with a set of initiatives was established. Among these, the most important ones are: the electronic dispatch of resources; the direct access of the court to several databases (ending the use of request letters) and the adequacy of the process management systems to the specific needs of the Public Prosecution.

Critical Software's activities on the project lies on the response to the client's needs concerning the coordination of the several initiatives that are developed; another activity is the assessment on the resources' adequacy to the project objectives previously defined - this will be achieved through the monitoring and management of projects on courts' information systems. The Project Manager will report the information to the Directorate General of Justice Administration, ITIJ and the Secretariat of State for Justice.

About ITIJ:
ITIJ is the public institute, subject to the supervision and guardianship of the Ministry of Justice, responsible for the studies, conception, conduction, execution and evaluation of the plans for updating information technologies of the agencies, services and organisms integrated in the area of justice.

» Back to the top «

Critical Software has signed a contract with ESA for OCDS

Critical Software is part of an industrial consortium led by the Norwegian company DNV (www.dnv.com) to develop an Open Concurrent Design System (OCDS) for the European Space Agency (ESA).

The ESA centre ESTEC is responsible for the concept and design of new Space missions. This process includes the analysis of the mission objectives, its feasibility, the orbit constraints, the payload and the characteristics of the satellite. During a Space mission design phase several engineers from different technical areas meet regularly to discuss, share ideas, and find appropriate technological solutions.

ESTEC addressed this problem with a so called Concurrent Design Facility (CDF, http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/CDF/index.html), which is a theatre-like room where about twenty engineers share their views and identify a common and consistent technological approach to the mission. Participants from remote locations can easily switch in through teleconference, having access to the same data as the people in the CDF room.

The OCDS project aims to develop an IT system to store and exchange the information among the CDF users thanks to an open engineering model database and a Service Oriented Architecture. Critical Software is responsible of the graphical user interface of the system. This will make it possible to visualize, modify, and share complex data models in a straightforward way.

To find out more about the space market offer at Critical please contact:
space-bizdev@criticalsoftware.com

» Back to the top «

Critical Software Technologies, the UK subsidiary, is on the move again!

One of the perennial problems of a growing company is the constant pressure on office space. Just one year after its last move, Critical's UK subsidiary company is moving office again as a result of further contract successes. One of the virtues of being on the Science Park of Southampton University however, is that there is usually enough flexibility to make a move relatively painless.

This time, Critical Software Technologies is moving out of the Business Incubator on Venture Road, into brand new space on Enterprise Road. The new space has all mod cons, including sensor-operated light switching. Located on the first floor of Kenneth Dibben House, the accommodation is configured in such a way that segregation of UK and non-UK staff will be possible whenever necessary for defence security reasons and this will help in obtaining the necessary site security clearance to enable the company to pursue more defence work.

» Back to the top «

Preventing information theft is Critical…

Organisations may face legal or financial risks if they fail to protect confidential information. Unauthorized access to information and theft of proprietary information are two of the most important security problems in our days. The issue of protecting corporate confidential information from employees' intentional and unintentional wrongful acts is increasingly more important, because organisations manage far more confidential information in digital formats than they did before. As a result, organisations face a major dilemma: How to maintain agility and efficiency, achieved through the share of information on theirs networks, and at the same time protect confidential information?

The defence community, where unauthorized information disclosure could signify loss of human lives, has long invested in solutions for this problem. They classify both people and information in different levels of trust and sensitivity, controlling the access and circulation of information, based on those parameters.

Previously to being allowed to access classified information, the worker must obtain an individual clearance, based on a previous examination to establish their trustworthiness. On the basis of this approach, generally designated by multilevel, are the process of information classification and the process of personal clearance. Critical Software solution to this problem is based on the enhancement of the largely accepted COTS applications, conveniently configured, allowing the organisations to enforce the access and communications policies.

» Back to the top «

Critical Software S.A. opens Romanian Subsidiary

The new company, named Critical Software SRL shall aim to provide Critical Software SA with a platform to approach emerging markets in Eastern Europe. The company has been established in July and is based in Bucharest. Cristóvão Bento was appointed the Managing Director of Critical Software SRL, moving from the parent company where he worked for more than 7 years in the Networking division.

Critical Software SRL offer in Romania will comprise software engineering services in company core expertise areas, including: Enterprise Application Integration, embedded software and dependability, command & control, and networking software. Target sectors shall include telecom, transport, defence, and aeronautics, amongst others.

Critical Software SRL operations in Romania all benefit from the great academic background within the team that is being built and offer outstanding quality levels as well as a very competitive price when compared with other European markets. Following the mindset of the parent company, the Romanian subsidiary will aim to conquer new markets by showing its capacity of innovation and deliver exceptional IT solutions, on-budget, on-time and on-quality.

Critical Software SRL
Str. Turnu Magurele nr. 270 D, corp C, Sector 4,
Bucuresti
ROMANIA
Tel: 0040 216 834 045

For more information please contact:
Cristovão Bento
Managing Director, Critical Software SRL
cbento@criticalsoftware.com



» Back to the top «

Interview with Nuno Almeida: The ASD market
The ASD market has been of strategic importance to Critical since the company's inception and is still a key revenue generator and focus of R&D work. It is also the market where Critical built its skill-set and its reputation for delivering dependable solutions, attributes that it has leveraged to enter other key market sectors.


Nuno Almeida, which has recently been appointed Business Development Director for Aerospace and Defence (ASD) Markets, gives his insight about the new trends, opportunities, Critical's added value and ongoing R&D projects in this particular market.

Q: What are the tendencies observed nowadays regarding solutions for the ASD market?   

A: On the Aerospace and Defence markets we have been evolving at an extremely fast pace. We are still producing reference technologies and services, but now we are taking advantage of another growth vector: we are applying technologies that we master in the space market to other markets. Considering that we are doing this on markets such as railways and aeronautics with a huge success, the growth pace is greater than ever before, and this is clearly due to our fabulous team of engineers and the added value that space technologies brings to other markets.

There are significant changes around the corner. The international scene is showing no signs of slow down in the Space, Defence and Security markets where Critical has been providing the lion's share of its ASD work. Aeronautics is also blooming with many aircraft programmes reaching prototyping and production phase sometime next year.

At the lower ends of international supply chains it is nowadays clear that high efficiency, high value are absolutely essential to achieving contracts. All the lower value work will gradually move towards countries with lower cost bases, e.g. as recently announced by Airbus. At Critical we regard this moment as flourishing with great opportunities to put forward some of the most advanced, value adding solutions we've been developing. These allow us to design faster, more reliably, test quicker, deploy correctly, all in complete adherence to the strictest international standards.

In technological terms we will certainly see a stronger push for solutions to be developed in much shorter lifecycles while simultaneously increasing quality and reliability of end products. This is opening huge opportunities for Critical to bring in innovative solutions.

Q: In which ways has Critical been able to make the difference facing the competitors? A: Our success is made of simple things. At Critical we add value to everything we do and because we are always so conscious of the customer's needs we end up fully understanding the domains in which we operate, providing adequate solutions, on-time and on-budget. I know this sounds over simplistic, but believe it or not, this is mostly what our growth is all about: being conscious of the costumer's real requirements at all times.

Of course I could go on and say that we invest on R&D, which is true, on training our staff in the most advanced technologies, also true, but the focus we keep in our minds is that this is all about how we can provide the best possible solutions to customers.

The range of technologies on offer is absolutely astonishing, and we are still doing a lot of R&D to enable us to stay on the edge. Let me demonstrate this by picking a couple of ongoing or recently closed projects:

• Vessel-X - this is a system capable of detecting vessels and extracting relevant features, e.g. size, speed. Such a system will allow verifying real vessel features against AIS reported VTS data, raising alarms whenever a vessel identification fraud is detected; This R&D work is currently ongoing.



• Fault injection in COTS: caters for seamless integration of COTS early in the lifecycle; this combines a range of capabilities, from robustness test and RAMS COTS evaluation to simulation of heterogeneous systems (e.g. hardware in the loop); This capability started with an R&D collaboration with NASA.

Q: What were the most prominent projects in which the company was involved up to the present?
A: The company’s fast growth is the challenge that we need to face now. We can proudly point to a large number of highly successful projects. Here is a list of some of the key projects we've been delivering:

• On Board Software for the Galileo encryption units: This is an ongoing project for which Critical is developing embedded software components for both the Payload and Platform Security Units. This is a challenging project given its complexity, the complexity of dependencies with other parts of the programme and the strictness of the development standards involved. Constellation control will fully rely on this solution.


• Flap control for a Commercial Airliner: Critical got a requirement for the development and certification of software for the tail flap control of a commercial airliner. We designed, developed, tested and certified the software according to the highest integrity levels (class A of DO178B). The advantages for the customer, an undisclosed subsystem supplier, were straightforward: no need to worry about software development and software certification.


• Portuguese Frigates – Protocol Mediation: Critical has successfully developed and deployed protocol mediation equipment (Multi Interface Computer Equipment), replacing obsolete equipment on the existing fleet. A range of equipments, including weapons and sensors, with heterogeneous interfaces are interconnected using this equipment, which also interfaces the on-board Command and Control systems. The results for the customer are of a very low TCO compared to what they had before.


• Aircraft Integrated Operational Support: while the aerospace market is going through huge paradigm changes, the systems that underpin businesses are very often out of step with organisations. Critical has been working with Westland Helicopters since the beginning of 2005 on a number of long term support contracts to improve efficiency and reliable service provision in the context of support to customer's operations. Throughout time, existing legacy systems such as LSAR will be integrated with other both existing and new systems, in order to achieve Westland's business goals: better value for money and a leaner support chain. With a group of Critical's solution architects and software engineers working on site, Critical has been focused on making sure that technical solutions, either developed or procured are aligned with Westland's long term business requirements.

» Back to the top «

CRITICAL OUT OF THE OFFICE

Conference on "E-Justice"
Organised on the scope of the EU Portuguese Presidency, this conference (which took place on the 3rd and 4th of September, in Lisbon) brought together foreign speakers, Portuguese e-Justice specialists and 200 lecturers from several European countries.

This forum aimed to analyse the main contributions of the Electronic Justice for the development of national economies, on the context of European Union. There was an approach of 4 main themes: e-Justice and the investment decision; e-Justice experiences in Europe and across the world; the European e-Justice portal; e-Justice and the future.

Critical Software was the technological sponsor of the event and was represented by Filipe Freitas (Business Development Manager) as a discussion leader.


The 6th International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology – Quatic 2007
Quatic2007 is the most important Quality event in Portugal (in the CIT area). The program included tutorials on innovative themes and several boards, where national and foreign speakers debated current and eventually polemic themes. Quatic2007 had the participation of two of the most well known professional organisations of the USA: IEEE Computer Society, which publishes the minutes; and the American Society for Quality, which will select the best communications and publish on the Software Quality Professional Journal. Critical Software was not only the official sponsor of the event, but also made two presentations, one by Carla Nogueira (Quality Manager) on TEQUA Workshop, and other by José Silva (Project Manager) about Project Management Office.

More about this conference at:
Quatic 2007


The 4th Ministerial eGovernment Conference
The Portuguese Government and the European Commission jointly organised the 4th Ministerial eGovernment Conference entitled “Reaping the Benefits of eGovernment”.

The goals of the Conference were to take stock and build on the achievements so far, to accelerate further development and set directions for the upcoming years. The event provided a platform for high-level political debate and facilitated the exchange of ideas.


More about this conference at:
4th Ministerial eGovernment Conference


World Space Week
“World Space Week” is an annual globe celebration that focuses on the contribution of space science and technology for the improvement of the human condition. The United Nations have officially declared the week of the 4th to the 10th of October to be its yearly week.

This year, and in the scope of this World Space Week, Critical Software wanted to be part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the human presence in space. Therefore, the company carried out a few presentations on the theme in three Portuguese primary schools. Critical Software also provided a set of activities that enlarged the students' knowledge on the theme of Space.

 

» Back to the top «

About Critical Software SA
Critical Software SA is an international systems and software company with headquarters in Portugal (Coimbra) and offices in San Jose (US), Southampton (UK), Bucharest (Romenia), Lisbon and Porto (PT). Critical Software S.A. supports mission and business critical information systems across diverse markets including Aeronautics, Defence, Financial Services, Government, Manufacturing, Space and Telecom. Today the company employs over 250 people and operates a quality system certified to CMMI® Level3, ISO 9001:2000 Tick-IT, ISO 15504, AQAP 2120 and EN9100. 

» Back to the top «

Contributions to this edition of CriticalNews from:
Andrea Pelizzari, Brian Luff, Cristovão Bento, David Monteiro, Maria João Oliveira, Maria João Santos, Nuno Almeida, Nuno Guerreiro and Rui Melo Biscaia.