Almira Labs – Blog

Almira Labs has been selected in the top 100 most innovative European companies in the Red Herring Award 2012. This award honors every year the most innovative companies in Europe. After passing several stages in this competition this week the fina lgala event was helt in Amsterdam where the TOP 100 of this year’s European companies were announced.

Companies included in this Top 100 Europe will compete later this year in the Top 100 Global Award which represents the most innovative companies all over the world. Within those Top 100 Worldwide in previous years companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo! and Skype were voted.

Javier Martin, Director General of Almira Labs, shows his enthusiasm for the candidacy: “I am honored that Almira Labs won the Red Herring Top 100 Europe Award as an innovator in the telecommunications sector. This nomination is a recognition of our value proposition in the development of innovative software solutions for operators and service providers. ”

Consult the list of awardees here: http://www.redherring.com/red-herring-europe/europe-2012-top-100/

Almira Labs has been selected as a finalist for Red Herring’s Top 100 Europe award, which recognizes the year’s most promising European-based privately-held technology providers.  As a finalist, we will present our innovative solutions at the Red Herring Europe Forum, scheduled for April 23-25, 2012 at Sofitel Grand Hotel in Amsterdam. The Top 100 winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony which will take place April 25.

Red Herring’s editorial team selected the finalists for the Top 100 Europe Award from a pool of hundreds of companies in telecommunications, security, Web 2.0, software, hardware, biotech, mobile and other sectors. The nominees were evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management strength, investor record, customer acquisition, market size, and strategy execution.

Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring pointed out: “The global economic situation has abated and there are many great companies producing really innovative and amazing products. Almira Labs shows great promise and therefore deserves to be among the finalists. Now we’re faced with the difficult task of selecting the Top 100 winners of Red Herring Europe. We know that the 2012 crop will grow into some amazing companies that are sure to make an impact.”

“We are honored to be selected as a finalist for the Red Herring Top 100 Europe Award as an innovator in the communications sector,” said Javier Martin, chief executive officer of Almira Labs. “This nomination is a wonderful endorsement of unique vision, approach and ability to create powerful software solutions that serve the business needs of mobile operators and service providers.”

On the 28^th of March Almira Labs will be participate as lecture at the 7th Conference “Exchanging experiences to improve processes of product and service development.” This event will take place in the Hotel Gran Via in Madrid and is sponsored by Gesein and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The focus will be led on the importance of standardized process improvement approaches in organizations to help to improve their performance and quality of software development projects.

As a Best Practice Case our company got invited to lecture about the benefits for small companies to invest in a CMMi certification and to share some personal inside of what challenges Almira Labs had to face in the period of process implementation until first achievements after a period of hard work and full dedication could be seen.

“The initial phase was the most demanding for us to divide the work and responsibilities thought for a team of 13 developers to only 5 people”, explains Eva Ogallar, Senior Developer and Responsible of Quality Assurance at Almira Labs and lets clear that “The most crucial part of an successful project planning is the fact that you need to reserve 50% of the entire schedule for a recurring cost, time and resource controlling.”

We invite all interested person to attend our open lecture at 13.15 p.m. that day to dip in more profoundly into this topic and get the possibility for a personal exchange of experiences with our developer team.

Almira Labs has entered its BrainPhone Store in the CTIA Wireless 2012 Big IDEA Award contest. A unique competition that CTIA designed to identify the next wave of innovation that will propel growth in mobile communications sector, the Big IDEA contest calls for ideas, visions or concepts that embody the true transformative power of wireless technology. Industry members are invited to vote online for their favorite “Big Idea.” The top five submissions that receive the most votes will present their ideas live at the CTIA Wireless event, scheduled for May 8th-10th in New Orleans, Louisiana. Online voting begins March 20th at http://www.ctiashow.com/BigIdea

Based on the unique idea that voice technology can deliver robust applications to any device, the BrainPhone Store incorporates a vast catalogue of next-generation applications and services that can work with any phone and operating system, including smartphones, feature phones and even fixed line devices.  Offered as a cloud-based software solution to mobile operators and service providers, the BrainPhone Store enables providers to offer high-margin value-added services such as email, social media, QR code technology, as well as specialized capabilities for individuals with disabilities and the elderly, throughout the subscriber base.

“We are excited to submit our vision for the CTIA Big IDEA contest and demonstrate how the BrainPhone Store provides ubiquitous mobile applications for the masses,” said Javier Martin, chief executive officer of Almira Labs. “Our value-added services are based upon the conviction that technology should focus on serving people, not on devices. As a result of this philosophy, the BrainPhone Store has been developed as a device-agnostic, cloud-based catalogue that is intended to serve the communication needs of every subscriber around the world.  We invite users, industry experts, and service providers to learn more about the BrainPhone Store, and to vote for it as the perfect choice for the Big Idea.”

From 27th February through 1st March, 2012, the world’s most important mobile exhibition, the Mobile World Congress (MWC), took place in Barcelona,  Spain. With over 70,000 visitors it was the largest attendance of professionals ever.

Certainly the loudest noise where made by different well-known handset manufacturer who used well the fair as a media platform to launch their latest smartphones models. But perceiving the tenor behind all the hoopla the real interest at this congress were focused on value-added-services (VAS) which can offer unique user experiences and therefore provide a real potential of differentiation for any high-end handset.

This idea also follows Almira Labs’ value proposal which we presented this year on the MWC. We utilize a cloud-based architecture that deliver advanced capabilities, like email, QR technologies, social media and other services, to all people – with all kind of devices.

With our services end user can perform a number of tasks just by speaking into a voice interface, such as sending personal messages, updating social media status, or composing and forwarding emails, and everything without the need to connect to the internet with their phone at any moment.

Because figures proved that featured phones still outnumber the global mobile market by 2:1. If operators, service providers and enterprises don’t include these devices in their market strategies, they will leave most of their customers behind.

Almira Labs‘ tools allow fast and low-cost development of Value Added Services (VAS) for the Next Generation Intelligent Network (NGIN) to provide unique voice-driven service to all people. This unique market approach offers a new revenue channel to our customers to improve their profitability and increasing their clients’ loyalty.

Almira Labs has been granted with funds from the Neotec II Programm from CDTI (Industrial&Technological Development Center) in Spain for its project “Grupo Informatico Almira Labs, S. L.” This initiative has been co-funded with E-Plan (Special Fund for Economic and Employment Plan), according to RDL 9/2008 from 28^th November.

The Industrial&Technological Development Center (CDTI) is a public institution from the Economy and Competitiveness Spanish Ministry. It is aimed at promoting innovation and the development of Spanish companies.

The Neotec II program represents an initiative that contributes to the improvement of the technological level of Spanish companies like Almira Labs, who base strategic business in developing an innovative and own technology for the development of value added services for both fix and mobile technology.

In these times of economical trouble in Spain which are getting a lot of companies to develop plan to establish abroad or export their products and services to foreign countries in order to be able to survive, Almira Labs has become one of the 7.500 PIPE national companies. This internationalization program is organized and leaded by ICEX (Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade) and the Spanish Council of Trade Chambers. It also has the collaboration of the Autonomous Governments in Spain and their regional chambers. Its main goal is to support and advice Spanish companies in their establishment abroad.

Almira Labs already has access to financial tools and services of the ICEX and PIPE professionals which are a great help to know the procedures and bureaucracy needed in every country to establish the company. Additionally, we can also benefit from financial support for foreign promotion activities such as shows, exhibitions and business travels.

We are very grateful to all ICEX and PIPE professionals who are working with us and are being a huge help in our current relations with other countries.

As Almira Labs is making its mark within the Spanish R&D sector as specialists in developing platform-independent Telco software with a focus on voice-based services, we are thrilled to share our expert knowledge also on this year’s IT EXPO East in Miami, Florida, which takes place from January 31st through February 3rd, 2012 the Miami Beach Convention Centre.

Our CEO,  Javier Martin, will speak at the 1st February, at noon, about “The Next Step in Social Media Evolution: Social Media Response Management” where he will discuss how expectations of social media are changing as its use grows exponentially. Followed by a panel forum he will focus on the ability for businesses and consumers to use social media in a more comprehensive and efficient manner.

Almira Labs’ latest product launch of Voice2Social is a service specially dedicated for easier use of Social Networks. It allows user to publish their own voice messages without any delay in their Facebook or Twitter profile by a simple local phone call from wherever they are and without any internet connection. This innovative service is released in Vodafone Spain and ready to use for every of their clients.

Divulging already in advance some of Javier Martin’s presentation insides “We are witnessing a paradigm shift in the way we communicate since Millions of us get our news, share our experiences, send messages, and receive feedback from social media first. Two-way communication within this new medium must be managed, and managed well”.

As an internationally renowned educational event for resellers, enterprises, SMBs, and Government Agencies, the IT EXPO provides an excellent forum to discover new added values of IP-based voice, video, fax, and unified communications.

We are looking forward to meet you on the IT EXPO EAST in person, and if you can’t pass by check out soon this Blog again or following our Twitter account @almiralabs to get first off a résumé of our presentation’s key statements about the evolution in Social Media.

Every New Year comes with some changes. From the 1^st of January, 2012, we changed the number assignation of our established call-in voice services.  Please note the following new service number in your phone agenda to access to your subscribed services as usual:

• Memmori (www.memmori.es):
  Your personal assistant to keep organized your daily tasks. Manage your agenda in an easy and effective manner by recording voice notes in your mobile which will be sent to your personal email account or to a predefined group of your contacts. Also usable with your Evernote y Remember the Milk account.

• Hablamail (www.hablamail.com):
  A special service exclusively for Vodafone Clients to send short voice notes via a simple phone call to the email addresses of your entire team in moments where important news need to be communicate but an internet access is out of reach.

• My Happy Email (www.my-happy-email.com):
  It’s the first voice mobile service especially dedicated for kids to send their parents, family and friends an email by voice without any need to know how to write or use a computer. As a Christmas Special they can also send a message to Santa Claus and the Three Wise Men to send them their special wish list. And the voice recording sent by our kids will be an unforgettable gift which last forever!

The entire Almira Labs’ Team wishes you a good start in 2012 and we are looking forward that you give our services a voice!

This was one of Almira Labs´ main goal for this year and it has been successfully reached. After months of hard work of the whole team, we have got the appraisal for CMMI level 2.

CMMI stands for Capability Maturity Model Integration related to software engineering and organizational development which provides organizations with the main elements for an effective process improvement. The appraisal is awarded by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

This award is again an evidence of Almira Labs’ philosophy to make quality our leitmotiv in everything we do, our processes and the products and services we develop.

Additionally, this model alows us to be in the vanguard of the Spanish software industry, and position ourselves in the ITC sector as a company with a strong innovator focus whose main objective is to bring added value and the highest quality rather than enter in a competition based on low prices.

For Us in Almira Labs, the appraisal for CMMI level 2 means a great way to end this year and the leads the path to further improvements that help us to get higher appraisals. Congratulations to Almira Labs team!