Gossip

Steve Hoffenberg is Director, Consumer Imaging Research at Lyra Research.
Steve is responsible for Lyra’s market research in consumer digital imaging products and services and is the principal analyst for the Consumer Imaging Intelligence advisory service.
He has more than a decade of product management and market research experience in the digital imaging industry. He was the product manager for digital cameras at Leaf Systems (now a division of Eastman Kodak), one of the pioneering companies of the digital camera industry in the early 1990s.
He initially joined Lyra in 1996 as founding director of the Digital Photography Advisory Service.
In 2000, Steve became director of product management at Sound Vision Inc., an engineering firm that designed low-cost digital cameras and TV-centric digital imaging and audio products. He rejoined Lyra in 2004 and led the company’s research in the digital television market before returning to lead the Consumer Imaging Intelligence service. Steve was with Leaf near Boston, when Scitex acquired the digital imaging startup (See biography).
Founded in 1991, Lyra Research http://www.lyra.com is a provider of market, product, and technology information and analysis focused on the imaging industry. Lyra Research provides targeted information on printers and copiers, digital photography, and imaging supplies to more than 2,000 clients in more than 40 countries. Lyra’s portfolio of services includes leading industry newsletters, special market reports, advisory services, conferences, and custom consulting.

IDIT Technologies announced the promotion of its Executive VP, Sales and Marketing, the ExScite Yoel Amir.  to the position of CEO. Yoel has two years experience as CEO of the company’s European subsidiary IDIT Europe NV, I.D.I. Technologies. Prior to that, he served as CEO of Advanced Systems Europe and held a number of CIO positions in advanced international hi-tech companies, most notably Scitex Europe in Brussels.
IDIT Technologies is an international vendor of Enterprise Application Software for the administration and full life-cycle support of insurance products and financial services. IDIT’s flagship product is a fully implemented, comprehensive online system for the insurance industry.
IDIT is owned by the Israeli Formula Systems Group (NASDAQ: FORTY and TASE: FORT), a IT solutions provider and services company.

 Eyal Desheh is chief financial officer at Check Point Software, he is responsible for all Worldwide financial management including investor relations, financial and risk management, planning and reporting. Prior to joining the Check Point team in May 2000, Desheh served as chief financial officer for Scitex Corporation Ltd., a world leader in digital imaging solutions for graphics communications, where he managed all major financial functions including investor relations, risk management, mergers and acquisitions and legal affairs.
Before joining Scitex, he served in numerous finance management and business development roles including Vice President of Business Development and Strategy at Bezeq, The Israeli Telecommunications Corp., Deputy CFO of Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd., President of H.L. Financial Services Ltd. and Vice President of Bank Hapoalim New York.

The Israeli company Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (www.checkpoint.com) is a leader in securing the Internet. Through its NGX platform, the company delivers a unified security architecture for a broad range of perimeter, internal, Web, and endpoint security solutions that protect business communications and resources for corporate networks and applications, remote employees, branch offices and partner extranets.

Since 2005, Avi Huppert is the CEO of Mempile.
Avi has held senior technical and mangement positions at Aprion, Scitex Israel output group and Israel Aircraft Industry.
Located near Jerusalem, Mempile developes a removable optical drive capable of storing one Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) of data on a single disc; two orders of magnitude more than what is available today. The company’s technology comprises both the disc itself and the drive required to read and write. Mempile’s discs will allow for fully secured storage of information and the application of robust digital rights management schemes; also, its discs have a much longer projected shelf-life than what is common today. Mempile has signed a number of cooperation agreements for the manufacturing and marketing of its products with major media and storage corporations.
Mempile was founded by Ortal Alpert CTO, in 2000. It raised about $27M from venture capital funds and strategic investors in three previous financing rounds.

Shuky Bronfeld joined CogniTens in late 2004  and today serves as the company?s VP R&D operations. Before joining CogniTens, Shuky served as VP R&D and division management member of the PCB Division at Orbotech (NASDAQ: ORBK), leading manufacturer of industrial machine vision systems. Prior to that Shuky founded a start-up in the high-tech field under the umbrella of the israeli Chief Scientist Office. Shuky began his managerial career at the Scitex cooperation, where he served as Department Head for the DFE (Digital Front End) Product Unit as his last position.
CogniTens is a provider of dimensional measurement solutions, focused on improving engineering and manufacturing processes in the automotive and other manufacturing industries. Their solutions are based on innovations in 3-D non-contact measurement technology, especially designed for manufacturing environments.
CogniTens is a privately held corporation headquartered in Israel, with offices in North America, Japan as well as representation and operations in other major automotive industry centers such as South America, Europe and East Asia including China and Korea.

The ExScite Giora Bitan is Executive VP andCFO at ECI Telecom.
Giora served in senior management positions at Scitex Corporation for over 14 years, 9 of which as Executive Vice President and CFO. At the time, Scitex employed over 3,500 people worldwide and its sales exceeded $700 million. At Scitex, he raised over $500 million in several private and public offerings and was responsible for completing a large number of mergers and acquisitions. During the past 5 years, Bitan was a General Partner at Giza Venture Capital, a leading Israeli VC firm, where he focused on investments in the communications and software sectors.
It may be interesting to note that Eyal Desheh, Giora?s successor as CFO at Scitex, is  member of ECI?s board of directors. Eyal is currently the CFO of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.

With about $650M in annual revenues, the Ramat Gan, Israel based company ECI Telecom offers telecommunications solutions for next generation telecommunication networks. The compay has three main divisions: Optical Networks Division, Broadband Access Division, and Data Networking Division.

The ExScite (Ex-Iris) John Ingraham has recently embarked on a new endeavor in Hanover. BlickTek was founded by John and a partner to provide Imaging Solutions, Financial Services, Communication Localization and Business consulting services in Europe.

John is a pioneer in the development of high quality digital color imaging systems. For over 25 years, John has assisted companies to develop and sell imaging software, hardware, and consumables and related technology products. His experience covers all areas of the imaging business from development, project management, product management, and business development.

John has worked in the field of imaging at: IRIS Graphics (a Scitex company), ColorGate Digital Output Solutions, GmbH, Lasersoft Imaging, AG, Oak Technology (Zoran), Lyson Limited.
Originally from the US, John currently works and resides in Germany.

Based in Hanover Germany, BlickTek provides Financial Services, Communication Localization, Business consulting and Imaging Solutions services, which includes: locating new markets and technologies, education and training, developing new applications and products.

March 15, 2006 (Amsterdam) John Ingraham of BlickTek gave a presentation entitled Impact of MicroSoft XPS on InkJet and Print Market (PDF) (click on the link to see the presentation),  at the 29th Global Inkjet and Thermal Printing Conference in Amsterdam. Microsoft XPS, the new document and print format and print workflow in Microsoft Vista, will provide significant improvements with regards to image quality and color fidelity over the existing GDI printer pipeline. XPS also appears to be a strategic initiative by MicroSoft to compete against Adobe and PDF. Printer, RIP and Software manufacturers will need to make changes to their existing applications and drivers in order to take advantage of XPS print and color capabilities.

Eastman Kodak Company has named the ExScite Robert VP Sales, Global and Strategic Accounts, for its Graphic Communications Group (GCG). Carmosino has more than 20 years of sales management experience in driving profitable revenue growth both domestically and internationally.
At Kodak, Carmosino will be responsible for managing relationships with GCG?s largest customers. Carmosino will work closely with customers to understand their short and long term strategic business needs, and identify and develop solutions that best address them. He will report to Andrew Copley, Managing Director, Global Sales and Operations and Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company.
Carmosino has held key sales roles with Creo, including regional sales director and director, strategic and global accounts, and with Scitex America Corporation as director, national accounts and publishing. Most recently, Carmosino served as North American vice president of sales for Pure Acoustics Inc., a consumer electronics manufacturer.

Takemichi  is a partner at Stanton Chase clients.
His background in senior management started with such companies as the Toyo Ink Corporation and then the Hasso Corporation and Pety Corporation. Prior to entering executive search, his high-tech tenures included seven years with Unisys Corporation and four years with the Nihon Scitex Corporation.
Some of T. Watanabe’s joint ventures experience include agreements between Scitex and Toyo Ink and with Fujitsu and Toyo Ink. He has published books about digital imaging for prepress applications, video and computerized automatic recognition systems for all kinds of input systems .
Stanton Chase Tokyo is one of the leading executive search firms in Japan . The firm has developed particular strength in the high-tech sector: Info rmation Technology, Telecommunications, Graphic Multimedia Software, Semiconductor Devices and Equipment, Medical Equipment, and Scientific and Industrial Equipment.

Beni Fish

Beni Fish has recently joined XMPie as VP Service and Support, EMEA /APAC.
Beni is an Ex STA as Eastern Regional Manager, EX STE as UK Customer Support Manager and EX STCL as director of ICS. All in all he spent 18 years with Scitex. Prior to XMPie he worked at Comverse, Vocaltec, ECI telecom and Eldor.
XMPie Inc. is a provider of software for dynamic publishing. Its variable data publishing (VDP) solutions help businesses efficiently design and produce highly personalized marketing materials. The software produces on-demand, targeted 1:1 marketing communications in print, e-mail and Web.  XMPie bridges design, data and printing functions to enable a collaborative production workflow and streamlines document ordering and customization with flexible Web-to-Print applications. XMPie is headquartered in New York with operations in the US, Europe and Israel.