Editorial

A Critical insight

Figures for the 1st quarter of 2008 show that Critical is on track with what are the company's business goals for the year. Yet again, Critical has managed to overcome the target figures for the quarter that now ended by some digits, proving that turnover forecasts and profitability expectations are well within reach. Something only possible due to the client centricity culture uphold by everyone in the organization.

Let me take this opportunity to emphasize how thrilled Critical is to have launched its first spin-in. Critical Materials' vision endorses self-healing bio-inspired materials that will revolutionize the design and maintenance of long-lasting equipment. The company positions itself as an enabling technology provider for the "nervous system and bio-brain" of critical applications of advanced materials. Critical Materials' mission will be to provide technology and efficient products for monitoring and diagnosis of critical applications of intelligent materials in the aerospace & defence industry.

Furthermore, edgeBOX, Critical Software's spin-off company flagship product has been carving its path to success. Not only did it win the "Best of Show Award", at the Internet Telephony conference held in Miami this January, it also managed to be acknowledged by Intel in a recently published success story. In Intel's words "small and medium-sized businesses often struggle with the increased complexity of software and hardware required to support their common applications and services. Network appliances such as the edgeBOX by Critical Links that provide data, voice and IT services out of a single box represent the ideal and simple solution to managing this complex environment."

At this stage allow me also to draw your attention to Critical's new corporate website. Being, as it must be, a work in progress, it is much more aligned with the company's service offering and approach to the market, allowing a better understanding of what Critical's positioning is. Please fell free to check it out and provide us with the always welcomed candid feedback.

See you soon

Rui Melo Biscaia, Marcom Manager

Critical Materials heads for the Aerospace and Defence advanced materials markets

Critical Software announced recently the establishment of its spin-in, Critical Materials, a start-up company, headquartered in Guimarães (Portugal) that will supply technology for OEMS and delivers products for monitoring and diagnosis of critical applications of advanced materials for the Aerospace and Defence industries.

Critical Materials comes out of the entrepreneurial vision of two PhDs from the University of Minho and the company's product portfolio is crafted to extend aircrafts' lifecycles, maximizing flight-time without jeopardizing safety and reducing maintenance costs.
"Maintenance of most aircraft and other long last equipment is based out of 'hard-time inspection intervals'. This scheme is based out of engineering margins defined at design time and does not take into account service history of components. There is an opportunity to reduce significantly operation cost of aging military aircraft by introducing efficient monitoring and diagnosis technology that reduces time/cost of inspection. There is a medium/long term opportunity to significantly reduce operation cost of aircraft and other long last equipment trough self-sensing and self-healing materials and associated products that reduce and avoid maintenance downtime", says Gustavo Dias, CEO of the Company.

For more information please visit:
http://www.critical-materials.com

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Critical Software takes part in project to measure the Earth's gravity field

Critical Software worked with ESA in the development of the GOCE satellite which will measure the gravity field and represent models of the Earth with extremely high accuracy and spatial resolution, allowing us to significantly improve our knowledge about solid Earth physics and climate research.

The GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) satellite is part of ESA's fleet of Earth Explorers, which will perform research missions for the Living Planet Programme. These missions focus on the key components of our planet, such as the geosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere and biosphere. The aim is to make space-based global measurements to advance our understanding of the interactions between these components and the impact that human activity is having on natural Earth processes. The GOCE mission will therefore improve our knowledge of Earth interior processes such as earthquakes and volcanism but also of ocean circulation, which plays a crucial role in energy exchanges around the globe, and sea-level change.

The development of the GOCE satellite was carried out by an industrial consortium of 45 companies, distributed over 13 European countries, which encompasses Critical Software, requested to support the GOCE Platform Application software (PASW) Module Test. GOCE is scheduled for launch in mid 2008 from the Russian spaceport Plesetsk.

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Critical signs contract with TDM during the Presidential visit to Mozambique

Critical Software has signed a contract with TDM (Telecomunicações de Moçambique) for the installation of a Network Management solution that will prevent fraud and illegal use of the network from happening. The signing of this contract has had a significant media coverage because it was slotted in the President of the Republic Cavaco Silva's state visit to Mozambique, where Critical Software's CEO Gonçalo Quadros and other Portuguese business men and entrepreneurs convoyed between the 24th and 26th of March.

This presidential visit aimed to strengthen political and friendly relations between both countries, through the promotion of a new cycle of economic and entrepreneurial cooperation, as well as valuing the common cultural heritage.

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British Ambassador visited Critical Software

Alexander Ellis, who took over from John Buck in September 2007, as the new British Ambassador, visited several Portuguese successful companies recently as part of his strategy to leverage commercial relations between the two countries. Mr. Ellis rallied with Critical's board on the 11th of March at the company's headquarters in Coimbra, where he had the opportunity to acknowledge its most relevant case studies.

The Ambassador, which notably spoke in Portuguese, reminded that the biggest investments made by Portugal in the UK are related to finances and the hi-tech industry.

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Parliament Commission for Innovation and Economy matters visited Critical

Last February, Critical was visited by Comissão de Assuntos Económicos, Inovação e Desenvolvimento Regional (CAEIDR), a Parliament Commission on Economy matters, Inovation and Regional Development. This stopover was part of business trip to Coimbra, Cantanhede, Porto and Aveiro, that aimed to have a reality check and closer look on the Portuguese accomplishments on innovation and technologic development matters concerning companies, industry associations and academia centers. The commission wanted to know specific ongoing projects, preferably the ones that promoted good practices and links between companies and universities.

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Critical wraps up Modernization Program for the Portuguese Navy

Critical Software has effectively deployed a Multiple Interface and Integration Solution (composed of both COTS hardware and software) on the Portuguese Navy, "Corte Real" frigate. This deployment - the third and last - was based on previous "Alvares Cabral" and "Vasco da Gama" successful frigate installations, and allowed the wrapping up of the Portuguese Navy Modernization Program for the "Vasco da Gama" class frigates.

This solution now includes an improved Navigation System (MICE-NAV fwd and aft) supported by a hard-realtime operating system (with associated IO drivers), which made it possible to improve the stability, safety and performance of the overall system.

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Is GMES an opportunity for the service industry?
With the growing concern about the environment and more and more initiatives taking place, we are striving to ensure a better world for our children. Joint initiatives like the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) between the European Commission and European Space Agency have been a giant step forward in the monitoring of the environment but also as a key political framework and a possible boost to Europe in terms of scientific and technology advances as well as in terms of employment.

Last 19th of March, the EARSC workshop was organised to shed light on these issues and produce a roadmap to make GMES an opportunity for the service industry. Critical Software's Business Development Director for ASD, Nuno Almeida, was one of the spokespersons to give his insights on opportunities and threats.

Nuno's presentation concerned SAFER (Services and Applications For Emergency Response), a Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), 3 years project coordinated by InfoTerra, involving 54 partners from 16 countries, where Critical is playing a key role. The SAFER project focuses on core service upgrade and validation. The first priority is the response when crisis occurs and the second, to have an extension to core service components before and after the crisis.

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Critical sponsors and participates on AFCEA's International Student Conference
On the 10th April, the AFCEA's International Student Conference was held in Brussels, Belgium. Critical was a proud sponsor having been represented by Nuno Almeida, Business Development Manager for ASD, who conducted a presentation under the topic "Defence and Security as Drivers for Innovation". In his presentation Nuno, spoke about Critical Software and its strategy, as well as, Innovation in D&S and Technology transfer. Furthermore, Critical invited two other guests to give their insights on the conference: Mr. Bernardo Patrão, from University of Coimbra, who presented "A COTS based approach for the Multilevel Security Problem"; and Mr. Eloi Pereira, from Portuguese Air Force Academy who talked about "Cooperative Control of UAV Teams".

AFCEA, which is the Association for Communications, Electronics, Intelligence & Information Systems Professionals, provides a technical and operational forum, free of commercial pressures, in which decision-makers and professionals from government, defence, industry and academia can meet. They are able exchange ideas and concepts, discuss current challenges, identify future requirements and develop solutions in all the disciplines of communications, electronics, information systems and intelligence.

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Critical Links is selected as a "Intel Software Partner Program" Success Story
Intel has published a Success Story regarding its collaboration with Critical Links, to which it gave support in the product development phase, namely with the optimization for edgeBOX's multi-core processors. This collaboration was achieved in the scope of the Intel Software Partner Program which has been supporting start-ups and young companies like Critical Links, to elevate them to business class.

"Intel has such a huge brand recognition, technical depth and resources that it provides a compelling value for start-ups like Critical Links, who need similar muscle but lack the resources to compete effectively" says , Abdul Kasim, Vice President for Global Marketing and Business Development at Critical Links.

Click here to read the full article

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Critical sponsors a decade of PAPS
Critical Software and Critical Links are proud sponsors of the Forum PAPS 2008 in its 10th anniversary. PAPS (Portuguese American Post-Graduate Society) is an independent, non-profit organization, with no political affiliations, which main objective is to promote interaction between the Portuguese postgraduate community in the US, and the universities and companies in Portugal, the Portuguese-American community and the American society in general. The Forum PAPS 2008 will gather its members in MIT, Boston, on 2-4th May, with some of the top academic, corporate, government and entrepreneurial figures for discussion and networking purposes.

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Security Solution for Angolan EMIS
Critical Software has signed a contract with EMIS, an Angolan company that aims to be the national banking acquirer and card issuer, for the development of a security solution. The main challenge of this project will be the development of a solution to protect internal information ensuring compliance with Cobit and PCI requirements.

The solution will provide preventive mechanisms to identify, register and solve attacks and threats to the EMIS infrastructure. This will be achieved by supplying two different approaches: a security planning approach providing guidelines to security procedures and policies, and a security infrastructure design. These approaches will work in order to protect the whole organisation in the event of an attack to the infrastructure itself. In this case, mechanisms will be installed and configured in such a way, that it will prevent the attacker from reaching sensitive data inside the organization. The project aims to subdivide EMIS LAN's ensuring the separation of all network traffic that deals with credit card transactions and the controls' integration regarding the secure transactions occurred within the network.

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Portuguese Government celebrates three years in office with Inov programs
Critical Software's board and workers who take or took part in the Inov Jovem and Inov Contacto programs were invited to attend a Portuguese Government ceremony to celebrate their three years in office. In this event held in "Pavilhão de Portugal", Portuguese Prime Minister, José Socrates praised both programs and revealed an increment on investment for those same programs in the future. Critical's workers Inês Melo and Hugo Ferreira were among the few youngsters who gave their testimonial in front of a big crowd and the Portuguese PM himself. Inês was the first youngster to ever participate on Inov Jovem and Critical Software, the first company to ever accept trainees from this program.

Critical Software has had 28 Inov Jovem and 10 Inov Contacto trainees since these programs were created and holds a 97% trainee retention rate from these very programs. Critical is eager to carry on supporting young professional and uphold every program which boosts employment among undergraduates.

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About Critical Software SA
Critical Software is an international company that provides solutions, services and technologies for mission and business critical information systems. The company was founded in 1998, is headquartered in Coimbra and has offices in Lisbon and Oporto (Portugal), San Jose (US) and subsidiaries in Southampton (UK) and Bucharest (Romania). Critical Software supports customers across several markets including Aerospace, Defence, Manufacturing, Telecom & Media, Government & Finance and Energy. Customers include Siemens, NASA, Soporcel, ESA, Vodafone, Eumetsat, EADS, Astrium, ChevronTexaco, Deutsch Telekom, AgustaWestland, among many others renowned in Europe and the US. The company operates a quality system certified to CMMI® Level3, ISO 9001:2000 Tick-IT, ISO 15504, AQAP 2120 and EN9100.

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