Gossip

Not all the Israeli technology companies exist just in order to sell themselves to a foreign giant and make a quick buck. AVT under the consistent excellent leadership of the ExScite

Shlomo Amir

is doing it the old fashion way- they earn it.
The Ramat Hasharon, Israel based Advanced Vision Technology (AVT), Ltd., a leader in automatic inspection solutions for printing applications, is pleased to announce the planned acquisition of Graphic Microsystems, Inc. (GMI), from Dover Diversified, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Dover Corporation, for $33 million in cash. GMI is a leading manufacturer of pressroom automation equipment.
Commenting on the acquisition, Shlomo Amir, President and CEO of Advanced Vision Technology said: “AVT has been enjoying double digit growth for the last five years. H1 2007 net income was $ 3.5 million on revenue of $15.9 million – and market conditions coupled with healthy cash reserves meant the time was right to seek out a suitable acquisition target.”
AVT develops and manufactures automatic inspection solutions for printing applications, mainly in the packaging & labels sectors. As of today, more than 1,600 PrintVision platforms are installed worldwide. AVT is a public company listed in the Prime Standard of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. AVT’s headquarters and manufacturing facility is located in Hod Hasharon, Israel, with marketing, sales and support offices in the United States, Europe and China.
See comlete press release here.

The ExScite (ex-Iris) Cyndy Hunter is the Director of Marketing at Agion Technologies since March 2007. Between 2000 and 2007 Cindy managed her own Hunter Marketing a Sole Proprietorship providing Strategic and tactical marketing services to B2B and B2C clients. Before that she was Director of Marketing at Polaroid for 3 years. From 1990-1994 Cindy was application and marketing and business line manager at Iris Graphics in Bedford Mass. Prior to Iris she was Strategic Planner at NEC for 6 years.
Founded in 1997, Agion Technologies Wakefield, MA provides safe, natural antimicrobial solutions based on silver, “Nature’s Antimicrobial.” The company is dedicated to developing consumer- and environmentally-friendly solutions for antimicrobial protection.

Edo_Ganot

The ExScite Edo Ganot joined Discretix in 2003. He is currently EVP Sales & Business Development, and holds direct responsibility for global sales and business development activities.
Prior to joining Discretix, Edo was EVP, Strategic Alliances & Marketing for Trivnet, a provider of e /m-Payment platforms for the wireless market and earlier the Worldwide Marketing Manager, Business Management Solutions for Scitex Corp. in Herzlia. Before that, he held Sales Management positions at ART Inc., a provider of voice and handwriting recognition solutions for the embedded wireless market.
Click here EPN, 23/07/2007 to see an interview with Edo at EPN- Interview of the Week, in which he highlights what his company can bring to the mobile industry for content protection.
The private Israeli company Discretix is a provider of embedded security technology for mobile devices and flash memory storage. Discretix technology, which incorporates both hardware and software components, enables security to be incorporated into products at the chipset level, making it transparent to the end-user while protecting sensitive information from malicious attacks, viruses, fraud, and theft. Discretix? solutions are deployed in a wide array of devices and mobile systems to enhance security, reliability, and user experience.

EFI Opens State-Of-The-Art Research and Development Design Center in Israel under the leadership of the ExScite Eli Shalev .

EFI (NASDAQ:EFII), has announced the opening of their premier inkjet research and development design center in Hod hasharon Israel.
The Israeli site was selected to take full advantage of the high quality talent concentration of inkjet engineering talent within the local population. This leading edge technology center will be committed to attracting and retaining the best and brightest the industry has to offer.
“Our new location provides us with an excellent professional, easily accessible research and development environment to better meet the diverse needs of our global customer base,” said Guy Gecht, Chief Executive Officer of EFI. “We are focused on delivering a consistent flow of inkjet product innovations for the superwide, label, packaging and industrial print markets.”
“We are pleased to open our new R & D facility and are currently assembling the finest team of professionals serving the graphic arts industry. With this capable team of engineers and project managers under one roof, we enhance our ability break through existing barriers in the development of inkjet technology,” explained Ghilad Dziesietnik, Chief Technology Officer of EFI, an ExScite himself.
Eli Shalev has joined EFI as General Manager and will be responsible for managing the new center.
Eli’s background includes numerous years serving as the General Manager of Scitex product divisions, developing multidisciplinary machines for the prepress industry. Later in his distinguished career, he served as a Vice President of R & D and Chief Operating Officer for Nur Macroprinters, developing and building wide format ink jet printers. 

“His successful career, numerous accomplishments and continued commitment to the success of our customers will truly be as asset to EFI and our new industry-leading center,” adds Mr. Gecht. 

The new facility’s charter will be to develop and validate the performance of new technologies, modules and best-in class printers. The R & D site will incorporate state-of-the-art technologies and encompass office space as well as research laboratories.
The new site will maintain continuous expansion and management of numerous projects started within 2007, increasing throughout 2008.

See complete EFI press release here

Yoav_Wechsler

The ExScite Yoav Wechsler is VP of Engineering at Atrica.
With over 24 years of R&D management experience Yoav leads the Engineering organization at Atrica Inc. Yoav comes to Atrica from Corrigent Systems where he held the position of VP Research and Development for five years. He has also held senior level R&D positions at One Path Networks, ADC Teledata Telecommunications and 14 years at Scitex R&D in Herzlia, working in various communication related projects.
Atrica of Herzlia, Israel provides a full range of Carrier Ethernet transport solutions to service providers delivering Metro Ethernet services. Atrica’s Carrier Ethernet product suite combines the benefits of Ethernet technology – including its low-cost, proven scalability, ease of management, and ubiquity in the enterprise market – with innovations in traffic engineering, service management and scalability to meet the stringent demands of next-generation transport networks.

Itzik_Weinstein

The ExScite Itzik Weinstein assumed the position of President & CEO et Ectel in May 2007 after serving as EVP Professional Services and Operations from 2004.  His experience includes positions as Vice President, Customer Services & Product Management at VocalTec,  Engineering Site Manager at NetManage, Software Engineering Manager of KLA-Tencor Corporation’s optical metrology division, as well as software engineering and project management positions at Scitex Corporation, Electronics Images Technology and Intel Corporation.

Rosh Ha’ayin Israel based ECtel (NASDAQ: ECTX) is a provider of Integrated Revenue Management (IRM) solutions for communications service providers. ECtel offers carrier-grade solutions that enable wireline, wireless, converged and next-generation operators to fully manage their revenue and cost processes. ECtel serves tier one operators, and has more than 100 implementations in over 50 countries worldwide.

Hezi_Himelfarb

Congratulations to our ExScite friend Hezi Himelfarb, Remon  Medical Technologies’s CEO.
(21 Jun 07) Caesarea-based Remon Medical Technologies, developer of intra and inter-body wireless communication for early warning systems of heart failure, is expected to sign a final agreement for its sale to medical devices giant Boston Scientific.
www.remonmedical.com develops and commercializes smart, miniature implants which enable physicians to assess and treat a variety of medical conditions in a non-invasive manner. The company’s technology utilizes wireless communications to exchange energy and data with minute devices placed deep inside the body.
The company will receive an initial payment of $80 million, with later payments from agreed upon milestones and royalties, which are expected to reach $300 million.
The parties declined to comment on the report, and the future of the Israeli company and its dozens of employees remains unclear.
Remon Medical had already raised $40-50 million from various other funds including Ofer Hi Tech Ltd., Biomedical, US fund Polaris Venture Partners, and others.
Remon, which was founded in 1997, developed a method for increasing the effectiveness of ultra-sound transmission by three orders of magnitude, meaning 1000 times.

 Nathan R. Yakobovitch has been promoted to VP Global Strategic Purchasing at Nice. Nathan joined Scitex Israel in May 1985 as a student. Over the years he served in different positions in Material Management and Purchasing and left Scitex after 11 years. Nathan joined NICE (he was brought in by Roni

Nathan R. Yakobovitch

Zomber, another Ex Scitex) as Purchasing Manager, later became Director of Global Purchasing, and now promoted to be Vice President of Global Strategic Purchasing.
NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) is a provider of Interactions solutions and value-added services, powered by advanced analytics of unstructured multimedia content ? from telephony, web, radio and video communications. NICE?s solutions address the needs of the enterprise and security markets, enabling organizations to operate in an insightful and proactive manner, and take immediate action to improve business and operational performance and ensure safety and security. Headquatered in Raanana Israel, NICE has over 24,000 customers in 100 countries, including over 85 of the Fortune 100 companies.

Nice has a nice contingent of ExScite?s– no wonder it is a successful company. We have the following members registered in our ExScite members? list. PleaseEmail usif you know of any changes, encourage ExScite?s who are not on the list to register and current members to update themselves. 
Anat Shem-Or, Avron Moss, Carmela Avner (Marcovici), Francoise NALE-WISLITSKI, Haim Shani, Ronit Barr, Ronit Kahana Goodman, Sasi Yehezkel, Shlomo Shamir, shmuel yohay, Zvi Wrobel

The CEO and CFO of the Israeli company Lumenis are ExScite?s.
Dov Ofer joined the company as CEO Earlier in 2007. Before Lumenis, Dov held the position of Corporate VP and General Manager of HP-Scitex.  Until the acquisition by HP, he served as the CEO of Scitex Vision Ltd, the (then) Scitex inkjet printers division in Israel.  Prior to joining Scitex Vision, Dov managed Matan Digital Printing, one of the pioneering companies in the super-wide format printing industry. 
  Lauri A. Hanover  joined Lumenis as Senior VP and Chief Financial Officer in August 2004. Prior to Lumenis, she served as Corporate Vice President and CFO for NICE Systems Ltd., and was instrumental in effecting a rapid turnaround through improved financial processes and controls, as well as strong working capital management. Prior to NICE, she served as Executive Vice President and CFO of Sapiens International. She also spent 13 years at Scitex Corporation Ltd., and 3 years at Altria (Philip Morris) Inc.
Headquartered in Yokneam Israel, Lumenis is a global developer, manufacturer and seller of laser, light- and radiofrequency-based devices for medical, aesthetic, ophthalmic, dental and veterinary applications. The Company offers a wide range of products along with extensive product support systems including training, education and service. Lumenis invests heavily in research and development to maintain and enhance its leading industry position. The Company holds numerous patents worldwide on its technologies.

Hana_Benshabat

Hana Ben-Shabat –  ex STE marketing director was promoted to Vice President and Partner with A.T. Kearney Limited. She is based in their London office and leading the UK Retail Practice.
A.T.Kearney is a global management consulting firm, www.atkearney.com