Israel Innovation 2.0

There may be trouble lurking around the corner for Israel’s economy given the current instability of the global economy, but it hasn’t entirely stopped investments being made in Israeli companies and probably won’t. During the week of September 21, 2008, there were announcements of funds being raised in several sectors of Israel’s hit-tech industry, with the most impressive one by far being the $63M in fourth round funding that business transaction software provider, OpTier raised. (Of course, as a fourth round, that indicates the company is fairly established so presumably much less a gamble than any seed and early stage startups.) Some other headlines from Israel include Kfar Saba became the first city in Israel to go green, Commtouch received an award for its messaging security technology and HP has chosen the Technion as a research partner. For more on these and the rest of the 16 Israel-related technology headlines from the week of September 21, 2008, check the list below.

Cleantech
1. Kfar Saba becomes first city to go green

2. 21Ventures and Quercus Trust award grant to support solar research at Weizmann Institute

Investments and M&A
3. InstallFree Secures $8.5 Million in VC Funding

4. Adap.tv Lands $13M in Venture Funding

5. Norwest Venture Partners sets it sights on Israel with new appointment

6. OpTier raises $63 million in funding

Information Technology
7. SiSense Launches Pricing and General Availability of Its Prism Business Intelligence Software

8. Jacada Announces General Availability of Jacada® WorkSpace 5.0

9. Frost & Sullivan Honors Commtouch with European Messaging Security Technology Innovation of the Year Award

10. Point-of-Sale Advertising Goes High Tech

Miscellaneous
11. Local economy set to grow 4.5%

12. Israeli Internet Companies Seek Partners in Atlanta

13. How to Expand into the U.S. Market

14. Hi-tech salaries drop as inflation heats up

15. New Worlds: Technion chosen as HP research partner

16. Startup Helps Find What You Weren’t Looking for (SemantiNet)

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

If you were at VMWorld 2008, the industry’s largest virtualization conference, last week and are wondering what presence Israeli companies had at it, you need look no farther than the winner of “The Desktop Virtualization Best of VMWorld 2008 Award,” InstallFree.

InstallFree, a provider of Dynamic Desktop Computing,

“enables organizations to centrally deploy and manage software applications to end-users in a stateless, flexible and cost-efficient manner across a variety of usage scenarios.”

InstallFree Bridge, the product that won, allows the lock down of a corporate PC without diminishing the end users’ experience. InstallFree Bridge end-users can access their desktop applications virtually from any computer anywhere and have local application processing and offline availability, all while still under the IT department’s control.

According to the website, additional InstallFree benefits include: single package for all platforms, separately package desktop elements, click and deploy, simplify application lifecycle tasks, business continuity on-click and foster end-user mobility.

Here is a demo video of InstallFree that Virtual Strategy Magazine posted on YouTube.

Company Facts
Founded in 2006.

R&D in Raanana, Israel.

Yori Gabay, Co-Founder and CEO.

Netzer Shlomai, Co-Founder and CTO.

Products: InstallFree MiniBridge, InstallFree Bridge and InstallFree Desktop.

Website: www.installfree.com