Editorial

An asset called body of knowledge

Critical has been pursuing an industry specialization strategy of its services and technologies, tailored for business and mission-oriented IT systems. Critical Health and Critical Manufacturing are the two newest examples of this path we have been following. These two spin-off companies are suppliers of IT solutions for the Healthcare and Advanced Manufacturing Systems industries, thus joining Critical Links and Critical Materials in a portfolio of companies that Critical now places on the market.

Critical Manufacturing will be a supplier of end-to-end ready-to-go products, addressing specific needs for high-tech manufacture. On a similar note, along with its "first born" product, RetMarker, Critical Health is already developing several other solutions, like Glautech - for the early detection of glaucoma -, or RDFixer - to calibrate the radial distortion effect in endoscope lenses. These projects are being developed, combining the effort of several technological partners, research institutes and universities around the globe.

Allow me to emphasize the importance of these partnerships. Critical strives to re-invent its ability to share and join efforts with research labs and universities, in an on-going attempt to unite talent and determination. In troublesome economic days, such as the ones we are living, it is of paramount importance to learn to appreciate merit, by helping creative thinkers endure the sacrifice needed to make dreams shape our future. Critical believes this to be the only way, thus is always seeking to nurture a close relationship with the more ambitious technological partners, who share our global vision and foster entrepreneurship.

Critical's path has been rich, stimulating and full of challenges that needed to be surpassed. For the future, we know we need to be humble, recognizing there are things that could have been done better, and have the ambition to realize there's no reason why we can't be the best of the best in doing them. We take pride in what we have accomplished and value our body of knowledge as our biggest asset.

I'll leave you now with a depiction of what Critical is and has been doing in the past few months. I hope you enjoy reading it and welcome you to drop us feedback and comments.

Rui Melo Biscaia

Critical addresses the Healthcare industry

Critical Health provides innovative and accessible technological products to help prevent the loss of vision, mobility and cognitive skills. The company's mission focuses on improving the quality of life, while reducing healthcare costs.

Critical Health is a consequence of the unavoidable challenges that this industry is facing, and which are forcing a shift in the healthcare paradigm. Among these are the aging population and the consequent increase in healthcare demand, the increased costs that require emphasis on preventive medicine and the growing global trend for evidence-based medicine driven by technological breakthroughs.

Following our strategy of passing on to society every technology and/or competence we have developed from research and development, Critical Health is the outcome of the investment Critical has made for the past years and is now ready to lead and participate in the resolution of complex challenges in healthcare.

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Critical supplies IT solutions for advanced manufacturing systems

Critical Manufacturing is a global supplier of IT solutions for advanced manufacturing systems. The new company business plan started being developed one year ago and the start of business is scheduled for March 2009. Stressing the importance of being close to the targeted geographical markets, Critical Manufacturing will start its operations in Oporto, Portugal, and business offices are already planned for opening in other European countries and Asia.

Manufacturers are under an increasingly competitive globalized environment, striving to provide innovative and customer-specific products, yet cost-effective. The manufacturing systems are a truly distinct competitive factor to improve return on investment, gross margin, lead time and to effectively manage complex manufacturing environments, increased product variations and more geographically dispersed manufacturing facilities. Historically, these systems were built in-house to accommodate unique operational needs. Today and in the future, companies are opting to buy end-to-end and ready-to-go solutions to reduce the TCO in the long-run, and minimize start-up effort in the short-run, while accessing latest available manufacturing know-how.

The strategy of Critical Manufacturing is to focus on developing IT products, aimed at supplying high-tech manufacturing companies in need of fast deployment, through a rich process coverage and ready-to-go functionality. Secure and sustainable operation - reliability, performance, scalability and extendibility - and low Total Cost of Ownership - efficient architecture, ease of use, strong interoperability capabilities - are also vital key success factors that Critical's products will address.

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Critical receives Innovation award

Critical was given the 2008 COTEC-BPI Innovation Award. The announcement of the 2008 award-winner took place during the 2nd Meeting of the SME Innovation Network and, according to the jury, Critical is an exceptional example of knowledge conversion into economic value, in highly competitive global markets. This award is an important recognition of Critical's innovative attitude and activity and example of value creation for the country. The jury also emphasized the significant expansion Critical has had during recent years and the strong capability of turning research and development into products.

Critical works in close liaison with high profile Research & Development institutions around the globe. By strongly investing in R&D - amounted to 10% of the company's yearly turnover - Critical recognizes its importance in the process of bringing new technologies, products and processes into the market, as well as incorporating innovation into our customer's projects.

COTEC Portugal is a non-profit business organisation whose mission is to promote the increased competitiveness of companies located in Portugal, through the development and dissemination of a culture and practice of innovation, as well as knowledge at a national level.

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Closer to the Academic world

Oporto University gave Critical an award for its volume and relevance in the ongoing partnership with that academic institution. Celebrating the Computer Science Faculty's 82nd anniversary, Critical was awarded the prize due to a strong relationship between the two institutions. This relationship has already made several students carry out their internships at Critical and participate in R&D projects. Critical has also given prizes to students who stand out. This has been a motivating factor for those future computer engineers to excel in their final projects.

Coimbra's University Computer Science Department has been promoting its Academy. DEI's Academy aims to inform secondary school students, guiding them through several courses that deal with Computer Science Degree's contents. As a DEI partner, Critical sponsored the first Winter course, offering a laptop computer to the winner. By sponsoring this kind of event, Critical's main objective is to encourage communication and collaboration with all the students.

For Critical, this recognition goes to show the emphasis the company puts in working in close liaison with universities. Critical is always searching for the best available know-how and is aware this can only be accomplished if companies and the academic world join in pursuing a body of knowledge capable of pushing new technology forward.

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Web 2.0 @ Critical

Critical has joined Twitter to better communicate and allow people to access last minute broadcasted information about the company. We are preparing a few surprises for those who register on our Twitter webpage, but for now "stay tuned" and feel free to give us feedback.

Along with Twitter, and several other web platforms where we are or will be present to better stay in touch, Critical invites you to check out our YouTube webpage where you can have a look at several examples of our history and day-to-day life.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates which are text-based posts. YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload, view and share video clips.

Please have a look by accessing Twitter and You Tube.

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Banking and Insurance companies rely on Enterprise Critical Systems

Critical established partnerships with several banking and insurance institutions. It was the case with the Portuguese banks: BES, in which Critical provided consulting services for the implementation of BPM for credit assurance processes; and CGD, for which Critical did some auditing and consulting for the home-banking platform. For the Portuguese Insurance Companies Association, APS, Critical has done some application management and further developed the "Segurnet" platform.

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e-Government breakthrough solutions

At Critical we are committed to deliver innovative and highly dependable IT solutions tailored for the judicial, Internal Affairs and Homeland Security areas. A few examples of Critical's participation are expressed in the new national system for electoral census, allowing complete interoperability with the Portuguese Citizen Card and also guaranteeing on-line census and electronic electoral books; the auditing of the national civil registry; and the bespoken solution developed to manage workers' professional risks and subsequent individual compensations from Social Security.

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Our Space DNA

Critical keeps on developing Safety Critical Systems for the ASD markets. One example is a new project for the European Space Agency: The Swarm Sim. The Swarm spacecraft is scheduled for launch on the 15th October, 2010. ESOC will develop the Swarm flight operations segment for spacecraft control. A software simulator of the spacecraft and ground stations is needed for control systems testing, validation of the ground segment and operational procedures, as well as training of operations staff. Critical will be responsible for the development of REFA-based SMP2 models, for integration in the SWARM simulator.

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Earth Explorer User Consultation Meeting

Last January, at Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, the Earth Explorer User Consultation Meeting was held. There, the findings of scientific and technical evaluations of six candidates for the next generation of Earth Explorer Core Missions (Premier, Biomass, A-scope, CoReH20, Traq and Flex) were presented and discussed by leading scientists from the Earth science community. Critical was present in this exhibition, represented by Ricardo Armas, Senior Project Manager.

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On January the 29th, at Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, Critical sponsored the event ICT Security, where more than 200 people got together to discuss safety and security issues which companies face nowadays. João Oliveira, Senior Engineer at Critical, presented a topic related to the classification and protection of confidential information. Here's an executive summary of the subject presented:

The exponential growth of electronically managed information inside companies has opened new attack vectors and threats to both business continuity and information security. Vast amounts of money are spent on firewalls, intrusion detection, anti-virus and anti-spam software. However, latest reports show the greatest threat to confidential information comes from inside the organization. Hence, how to maintain agility and efficiency, achieved through the sharing of information on company networks, and at the same time protect confidential information?

csSECURE provides information access control and information flow control mechanisms, that allow authorised users to give any file or email created or accessed a security classification. Based on the information's security classification and the security clearance given to the user, he/she can open, edit, print, copy and/or paste the classified and encrypted information container (files, email, etc).

Do you want to know more?

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New headquarter office building in Coimbra

Last December 12th, Critical hosted a ceremony to celebrate the opening of the company's new headquarter office building in Coimbra. Aníbal Cavaco Silva, president of the Portuguese Republic, was a guest speaker at the event and it was a pleasure to receive such an honourable state figure at our premises.

Over the last 10 years, Critical has kept on growing not only in size but also in energy and motivation. Critical started its operations at the IPN incubator and, one year after opened its first subsidiary in the USA, following its first contract agreement with NASA. In the following years, Critical kept on investing in developing dependable solutions for critical systems. Nowadays, Critical is a consolidated project. We have three development centres offices in Portugal and subsidiaries in the US, UK and Romania.

Watch the video of the event in YouTube!

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CiberMouse@RTSS 2008

Critical sponsored the CiberMouse@RTSS 2008. This competition took place in Barcelona, organized by the Universidade of Aveiro, and was based on the CiberMouse Simulation Environment.

The task of the teams was finding a target area, signaled by an IR light emitting beacon, and bring the whole team mates there. The final score depends on the number of robots that get to the target area, on the time of the last robot that get into the area and on possible penalties due mainly to collisions with walls and other robots.

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CRITICAL LINKS

edgeBOX Selected by ONI to Deliver Cutting Edge Managed Services for SMEs Critical Links has been selected by ONI Communications, a next-generation fixed line European telecommunications operator to supply edgeBOX Business Gateways to support ONI's new Managed Services providing for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). ONI Communications is a provider of communication solutions focusing on the corporate and carrier markets.

The ONI Communications offer delivers a comprehensive suite of managed communication and networking services based on the remotely managed edgeBOX "all-in-one" customer premises equipment and enables SMBs to increase productivity and competitiveness, while reducing their operational costs. SMBs benefit from this sophisticated set of networking capabilities without any upfront investment.

The edgeBOX is a service provider-ready platform which delivers voice, data, networking and security services. It enables services such as VoIP, VPN, WiFi among a wide range of others; by effectively replacing several dedicated devices, it significantly reduces operational and management costs associated with delivering these services. The edgeBOX device will connect the SMB customer's LAN to the ONI WAN, allowing customers to further leverage ONI's leading edge IP-MPLS network to the highest quality of services in the market.

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Critical Health Critical solutions for the health market

Critical Health released its first product, focusing on Diabetic Retinopathy progression monitoring.

Developed in partnership with the Association for Biomedical Research and Innovation in Light and Image, from Coimbra, Retmarker addresses the diabetic population, which is currently estimated to be 200 million people, and is foreseen to reach 360 million people in 2030.

Retmarker provides information to monitor the progression of retinal diseases over time, providing quick and valuable information so that the ophthalmologist can make a diagnosis and a more careful analysis of Diabetic Retinopathy and other retinal diseases. Diabetic Retinopathy is considered the main cause of blindness in the world.

The information provided by the solution can also be used by clinicians and optometrists for screening purposes. Retmarker highlights differences between time sequential images which allow the doctor's analysis to be focused on what is important.

The first version of the Software as a Service (SaaS) version of Retmarker is available online at www.retmarker.com.

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ROMANIA
Critical Software SRL has obtained the ISO 9001:2008 Tick IT and AS EN 9100 certifications, being one of the first companies in Romania to obtain the latter. The AS EN 9100 certification is an internationally recognized quality standard, specific to the Aeronautics industry, either civilian or military.

The ISO 9001:2008 Tick IT certification configures the adaptation of the renewed ISO 9001:2008 TickIT, an international standard related to quality management, applicable to any organisation from all types of business sectors and activities, in view of quality requirements for the IT systems and software development areas.

The achievement of such certifications grants Critical Software SRL not only the recognition for its Quality Management System but also a trademark, able to highlight the company in the software development market.

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Contact us
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, do not heasite to contact us.

In order to do so, please use the form at our website by clicking here.

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About Critical Software S.A.
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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Critical Group
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