Meet up with Symbio at the Global Electronics Forum (GEF) and Global Semiconductor Forum ( GSF) in Shanghai to learn how Symbio has helped its clients in demanding product development projects.

Symbio’s value as a software R&D partner to world’s innovators is based on extensive understanding of mobile and embedded systems. Through the ability to address the complete system software stack from applications to middleware, OS integration and drivers, Symbio’s global organization can deliver high quality software for user experience driven applications.

We are pleased to meet you to discuss cooperation possibilities. To request a meeting, please contact us at marketing@symbio.com.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Meet Symbio at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to learn how Symbio has helped its clients through demanding software product development projects.

Symbio's value as a software R&D partner to the world's innovators is based on an extensive understanding of mobile and embedded systems. Through the ability to address the complete system software stack from applications to middleware, OS integration and drivers, Symbio's global organization can deliver high quality software for user experience driven applications.

We are pleased to meet you to discuss cooperation possibilities. To request a meeting, please contact us at marketing@symbio.com.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

The Linux Foundation is pleased to announce the launch of the Automotive Linux Summit (ALS). ALS is event specifically for the automotive industry and the growing cross-industry ecosystem for future mobility solutions.-Test

The Automotive Linux Summit is the premier vendor-neutral business and technical conference for companies and developers using or looking to use Linux and open-source technologies in automotive applications ranging from in-vehicle on-board system to cloud solutions for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications.

ALS is the event where automotive expertise meets open-source excellence talking and collaborating on solutions meeting the challenges of tomorrow's vehicular applications, traffic and mobility management solutions. For those who are developing embedded and/or infrastructure systems for the automotive industry and looking how they can leverage the power and flexibility of Linux and open-source to jump-start their product development ALS will be the one-stop source for business-oriented, technical and legal information.

Ultimately, ALS will bring together the key players and industry excellence to create a momentum for new opportunities through open innovation.

Keynote Speakers:

Graham Smethurst, President, GENIVI Alliance and Head of Infotainment Architecture Design, BMW, will discuss the lessons learned from GENIVI.

Ken-ichi Murata, Project General Manager, Electronics Development Division #1, Toyota Motor Corporation, will discuss open innovation for IVI and beyond.

Juha-Matti Liukkonen, CTO of the Device Creation unit at Symbio, will discuss how next generation IVI systems are built.

Who Should Attend:

Senior Business Executives, Software Developers, Consumer Electronics Specialists, Telematics Experts, Network and Infrastructure Professionals, Students, Media and anyone else with an interest in an automotive ecosystem built on Linux and open-source.
 

These companies are joining The Linux Foundation to collaborate on advancing Linux in the enterprise and in mobile computing. They join seven other new members from Europe announced earlier this month (http://www.linuxfoundation.org/newsmedia/ announcements/2011/10/linux-foundation-announces-newmembers- throughout-europe) and are coming together to collaborate this week at the first-ever LinuxCon Europe taking place in Prague, Czech Republic: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-europe.

Today’s new Linux Foundation members include:

Above IT is a Dutch ICT integrator that implements the newest open source technology while optimizing business processes for the Small and Medium Business (SMB), enterprise, government, education and embedded systems markets.

“Linux is the foundation for all of our open source software development and business in general. The choice for open source technology is driven by the market demand for innovation, agility, and continuity of services in sectors like SMB, education, industry and government institutions. Above IT recognizes the innovative power of technologies like open virtualization and open standards as enablers of business agility. By joining The Linux Foundation, we will be able to push our technology to the edge with more direct collaboration with a worldwide community of developers, vendors and IT users,” said Dimitri van der Spek, CEO, AboveIT.

Comarch has been an active player in the mobile and embedded software domains since 2001. Through a variety of projects in the area of mobile software development, integration, quality assurance, interoperability and cross-platform consulting services, Comarch has proven its deep technical knowledge, know-how and market understanding. With more than 3,500 employees, Comarch can offer flexibility and scalability in building business partnerships and expertise alliances.

“Linux-based solutions have always been an important part of Comarch’s offering since the company was created in 1993. We want to share our experience in virtually all Linux flavors, including desktops, servers, clusters, mobile/embedded and automotive platforms,” said Dariusz Filipski, R&D Director, Open Source, Mobile Solutions & Services, Comarch. “Membership in The Linux Foundation will bring us closer to our business partners as well as open source communities to streamline our efforts for providing what’s best in open technologies.”

CSR is a leading global provider of personal wireless technology, including Bluetooth, GPS, FM and Wi-Fi to industry leaders in consumer electronics, mobile handsets and the automotive industry. Its technology has been adopted by market leaders in a wide range of mobile consumer devices. With close to 3,000 employees and a longstanding Bluetooth market leadership position, CSR brings a wealth of knowledge to the Linux community.

“Linux is at the heart of networking and wireless technologies,” said Ahmet Alpdemir, SVP Mobile, CSR. “Our Linux Foundation membership will inform our Linux and open source strategies and allow us to collaborate on advancing Linux in this area.”

Symbio is a global software R&D company providing software product engineering to industry leaders in mobile phones, consumer electronics, automotive In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI), industrial systems, and internet and cloud services. The backbone of Symbio’s expertise for consumer devices is a deep understanding of Linux architecture and system performance. Symbio utilizes a Design Centric Development (DCD) approach paired with agile programming methods to help its clients meet the ever-increasing demand for more consumer-friendly, user-experience driven device software. Symbio’s main locations are in China, Finland, Sweden and the USA.

“Linux plays a central role in the work we do for our clients developing consumer devices, automotive IVI or industrial systems. Let’s face it, most of the projects we carry out are pretty demanding, and Linux provides the flexibility, accessibility and technical feasibility for us to meet those high demands,” said Konsta Hansson, VP & General Manager, Symbio. “We’re looking forward to fruitful collaboration with the Linux community and contributing to the promotion, protection and advancement of the Linux operating system.”

Tieto is based in Northern Europe and provides IT and product engineering services. With about 18,000 experts on staff, the company focuses on offering specialized IT solutions and services complemented by a strong technology platform.

“The Linux community is global and diverse, representing interests of companies and individuals from around the world. We’re proud to be a part of this community. The Linux Foundation membership allows us to formalize our commitment to this community. As a result, our customers, such as network equipment providers, mobile device manufacturers, automotive sector and smart products engineering businesses, can even better capture the benefits of this platform,” said Ville Aittomäki, Head of Devices R&D, Tieto.

“Europe is a hotbed for Linux and open source development and business, which is why we created LinuxCon Europe and why we’re so excited to welcome more members from this region,” said Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer programs at The Linux Foundation. “We’re looking forward to the collaboration opportunities with AboveIT, Comarch, CSR, Symbio and Tieto this week and in year ahead.”

About The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2000, the organization sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and promotes, protects and advances the Linux operating system by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source development community. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral forum for collaboration and education by hosting Linux conferences, including LinuxCon, and generating original Linux research and content that advances the understanding of the Linux platform. Its web properties, including Linux.com, reach approximately two million people per month and include important Linux video resources. The organization also provides extensive Linux training opportunities that feature the Linux kernel community’s leading experts as instructors. Follow The Linux Foundation on Twitter.

###

Trademarks: The Linux Foundation, Linux Standard Base, MeeGo, Tizen and Yocto Project are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Jennifer Cloer
The Linux Foundation
503-867-2304
Jennifer (at) linuxfoundation.org

The theme of SIME Stockholm conference this year is Surfing the Next Wave and it is an event arranged by people with passion to spread knowledge about the Internet and digital opportunities. SIME brings together top executives, marketing professionals, aficionados and members of the press for a conference about how digital opportunities can convert to new business, a better world and a lot of fun. Read more at http://sime.nu/event/stockholm/.

During two action-packed days SIME will be your guide into new insights, concrete business opportunities, tools and the smartest brains from the international digital arena. SIME will gather 60 speakers and over 1600 participants in the beautiful venue of the Cirkus at Djurgården, Stockholm.

Symbio is a natural part of this arena and will be there as a SIME Academy Partner, powering the SIME Co-Innovation Corner, a large space where the guests can mingle and meet expertise from Symbio, who are there to give inspiration to your next innovation.

In the SIME Co-Innovation Corner, Symbio will demo and showcase different customer solutions and technologies important to those of you who have great business ideas but need support on the technology side to make the dreams come true and enable you to surf the next wave.

If you want to be more familiar on the concept of Co-Innovation, also make sure you take part in the workshop hosted by Symbio CEO, Jacob Hsu on Tuesday, November 15 at 3:15PM. The workshop theme is a Co-Innovation Lab with take aways built from Symbios global experiences in the co-innovation area. Find more information here: http://sime.nu/stockholm-workshops/

If you are attending the conference and want to book a meeting with Symbio representatives in the SIME Co-Innovation Corner, or want to know more about us as a Co-Innovation partner, please send an email to SIME@symbio.com and we will arrange that for you.

Join Symbio at Øredev 2011, Premier developer's conference, 11th of November.
Marcus Johnson, will be presenting “Graphical System Design with G” in the track “Cool Languages”

Graphical System Design with G

Track: Cool Languages, Friday 13:10 - 14:00

The first vision for G was to do for measurement systems what excel did for accounting. Now the vision is to be the google earth of your development project, letting you go from high level system views down do fine details in FPGA signals. Do you ever create systems abridging the realms of Desktop|Embedded|FPGA ? Picture this: a graphical programing language diagram suitable for designing such a system. You may have written your last line of code. By the way, how else were you going to use that shiny new tablet?

After the dust around SOA has settled, we now see for the first time the real reuse of services in the cloud. Microsoft skips infrastructure and servers and goes directly to services and building blocks there.

What is required to move an existing application in Azure? How is the Azure different than regular hosting? How to optimize for Azure?

In this seminar we´ll go under the hood of Azure and you will learn how developers are going to compose systems in the cloud.

This seminar is not for CIOs or IT managers who want to understand the profitability or basics of Cloud Technology. This one is for the geeks, the doers, the tech guys.

About the speaker
Ronny Hansen, Senior Software Architect - Symbio

Ronny has worked with Microsoft technology since 1990, and is today developing in .NET on everything from embedded devices with .NET Micro Framework to Cloud solutions with Windows Azure - and everything in between.

He is a board member of Norwegian .NET User Group (NNUG.no), involved in the Norwegian Computer Society (www.dnd.no) Cloud Computing Research groups and is responsible for SQL Azure in SQL Server User Group (SQLUG.no).

Ronny holds a number of presentations internally, but has also been giving presentations at NNUG, Microsoft and for the Norwegian Computer Society

This seminar is free of charge. The number of participants is limited, so don't wait too long.

Agenda

Stockholm
Friday, October 14
8:00 - 9:30
Igeldammsgatan 30 A
Stockholm

 

Join Symbio at the upcoming Qt Developer Conference in Munich, the event where you can learn directly from the developers of Qt and partners how to better use of Qt and the Qt SDK.

To schedule a meeting with Symbio at the event, please contact

marketing@symbio.com

Looking forward to meeting you!


Symbio

SERIOUS ABOUT SOFTWARE

We also invite you attend our session titled “Software engineering for industrial systems”, where we present “reusable code-modules, classes and design patterns useful when building mission critical distributed systems, like for example RT systems”.

You can customize your day by selecting sessions of your interest from tracks on software development techniques. NIDays is the event to meet other LabVIEW users and learn more about new technologies! Visit ni.com to discover what NIDays – The LabVIEW Conference is all about.

Date and Location:
20 September – Sherathon Stockholm Hotel, Stockholm
22 September - Thon Hotel Arena, Lillestrøm
11 October - Helsingin Messukeskus, Helsinki
13 October - Søhuset, Hørsholm

To read more about NIDays – The LabVIEW Conference and to register for this free one day event, please visit ni.com

Hope to see you there!

Symbio

雙方都認為，台灣企業在過去二十年來所建立與奠定的硬體以及供應鍊經驗很難被取代，但台灣科技業正面臨軟體人才短缺的問題，讓產業升級面臨一些因難。因此 Symbio 與 Moko365 雙方的合作希望能優先協助台灣業者解決人才與技術問題，讓台灣業者能建立軟體與硬體的整合能力，繼續創造未來二十年的台灣競爭力與優勢。

雙方將優先協助業者解決軟體人才短缺問題

Symbio正在積極佈局台灣的手持移動裝置的開發團隊，Symbio技術長劉俊賢(Alex Lau)表示：「 Moko365 是我們在台灣拓展業務的策略伙伴，我們希望借重 Moko365 在教育訓練以及技術研究的經驗。雙方將共同舉辦 Android 人才培訓營，Symbio與Moko365 將從中招募具有明星潛力的學員，並進行更深度的培養。」同時Symbio與Moko365將提供業界顧問與軟體外包服務，直接為企業提供產品開發上的解決方案。

Moko365是台灣指標性的Android培訓與技術研究專家，長期為台灣與大陸企業提供服務，Moko365技術總監Jollen說：「成熟的軟體產業，有一種特別的公司，扮演顧問及協助R&D的角色，當台灣正從代工走進軟體產業，Moko365期望能擔任起這個角色。」台灣在Android生態系統圈裡扮演重要的角色，Symbio與Moko365的首要目標是解決軟體人才荒的問題，雙方將首先舉辦 Android 軟體人才培訓營。

關於 Moko365
仕橙研策科技(Moko365 Inc.)成立於2009年，定位為技術研究者，旗下仕橙3G教室已成功規劃出嚴謹的課程體系，也為台灣、大陸與美國企業提供Android & Linux的內訓等各項服務。仕橙3G教室創辦自今，累計開辦Android & Linux公開課程近100個班次，包含公開在內，總計訓練研發人員超過3000人次，仕橙3G教室目前是台灣開課規模最大的Android教育訓練中心，也是台灣領先的 Android 顧問專家。更多仕橙研策科技的訊息，請造訪：http://www.moko365.com

關於 Symbio
Symbio於西元1994年在台灣與美國同時成立，為全球科技企業提供一流的軟體設計與開發服務。目前Symbio在美國、芬蘭、瑞典、中國大陸以及台灣都設有研發機構。我們在全球一共擁有22個辦公室、7個研發中心、5個離岸開發中心，憑藉這些全球性的資源，Symbio協助客戶開發各種創新科技。Symbio為客戶提供一站到位的服務，可包括部份或全部如下內容：

服務領域：

• 移動及嵌入式軟體；
• 網路及雲端計算；
• 企業及行業應用。

• 專業顧問；
• 需求分析與架構設計；
• 軟體開發；
• 品質保證與測試服務；
• 產品技術支援。

更多Symbio的訊息，請造訪：
http://www.symbio.com

Kun esirippua raotettiin ensimmäistä kertaa Mangosta Mix11 –konferenssissa muutama kuukausi sitten, oli ilmassa aistittavissa suurta innostusta. Nyt kun pöly on alkanut laskeutumaan, onkin sopiva hetki alkaa hieman analysoimaan sitä, mihin siitä todellisuudessa on. Ensimmäinen versio Windows Phonesta oli rajapinnoiltaan ja mahdollisuuksiltaan kuitenkin rajattu, ja sille ei pystynyt toteuttamaan monia ohjelmia jotka pystyi tekemään kilpaileville alustoille.

Henkilökohtaisesti en ole koskaan innostunut rajapintojen määristä, sillä ’tilastot näyttää mitä tilaaja tahtoo’. Se, että tuodaan alustaan mahdollisimman paljon uusia rajapintoja ei välttämättä aina ole kehittäjän etu, sillä määrä ei korvaa laatua näissäkään asioissa.  Se, mikä ohjelmistokehittäjiä kiinnostaa, on mitä näillä uusilla rajapinnoilla pystyy tekemään. Olemme tehneet jo eräitä projekteja hyväksikäyttäen Mango -päivitystä, ja seuraavaksi jaan hieman kokemuksiamme siitä, miltä Mango maistui.

Koko Mangon varmasti toivotuin uudistus on Socket –tuki. Tässä kohtaa Redmontin tiimi yllättääkin positiivisesti, ja Mangon myötä Windows Phonelle pystyykin toteuttamaan tutkimamme pohjalta  lähes kaiken muun paitsi webbiserverin. Nyt siis Windows Phonessa pystyy toteuttamaan erikoisprotokollia vaativia ohjelmia, vaikkapa IM/Chat sovelluksia sekä usean pelaajan verkkopelejä. Yksi tähän liittyvä hyvä geneerinen huomio on se, että rajapinnat ovat hyvin yhteneväisiä monilta osin web –pohjaisen Silverlightin kanssa, joten asioita on suhteellisen kivuton siirtää puhelimen ja webin välillä.

Socket –tuen lisäksi hyvä lisäys alustaan on paikallinen tietokantamoottori. Se auttaa erityisesti erilaisten yrityssovellusten teossa, jotka ovat tähän asti olleet hieman työläästi toteutettavissa WP:lle. Mangon myötä Windows Phone alkaakin olla varteenotettava alusta enterprise sovelluksille, sillä näiden teknisten uudistuten lisäksi myös Marketplace on uudistunut ja sen myötä mahdollistaa yrityksille nykyään oman privaatin jakelukanavan, jota ei aiemmin ollut.

Toinen huomattava uudistus, jota kehittäjät ovat kuorossa huutaneet (ja metsä on vastannut), on pääsy raakaan kameradataan. Tämä vuorostaan on tehnyt Mangossa mahdolliseksi erilaiset hyvinkin mielenkiintoiset augmented reality –pohjaiset ratkaisut. AR onkin monen mielestä yksi seuraavista mullistuksista sosiaalisten ja lokaatiopohjaisten palvelujen lisäksi mobiilisovelluksissa. Eräässä projektissamme toteutimme tälläisen toteutuksen Mangon päälle, ja positiivisena yllätyksenä totesimme että rajapinnat oli todella helppo omaksua ja käyttää, joten sen vaatima työn määrä oli murto-osa verrattuna esim. Symbian versioon samasta ohjelmasta.

Yksi huomionarvoinen asia tässä Mango updatessa onkin se, että rajapintoja ei ole vain hätäisesti raavittu kasaan suurta määrää, vaan niiden toteutuksessa on myös mietitty niiden toimivuutta ja käyttötapauksia. Tästä toimii hyvin esimerkkinä Sensor API.  Sen sijaan, että kehittäjän pitäisi toteuttaa itse monimutkaisia matemaattisia kaavoja raaka-datan konvertoimiseksi hyödylliseen muotoon, onkin nämä hoidettu jo Sensor API:ssa valmiiksi.  Lisäksi jokaisen sensorin datavirtaan pääsee käsiksi myös suoraan, joten devaajille jää tässäkin asiassa vapaus valita mieluisin tapa hoitaa asiat.

Kehittäessä yksi hyvin oleellinen asia on myös kehitysympäristö. Tämä on myös päivitetty Mangolle, ja mukana seuraa kehittäjä- ja design -välineiden lisäksi myös uudistettu emulaattori. Se, mikä tekee tästä maininnan arvoisen on se, että nyt mukana on myös kiihdytysanturien sekä lokaatiodatan simulointi. Näitä molempia voi tallentaa, ja sitten toistaa emulaattorissa ja näin helpottaa  huomattavasti sovellusten testaamista.  Lisäksi mukaan on nyt myös päässeet profilointityövälineet, joilla voidaan tutkia suorituskykyyn liittyviä haasteita ja näin varmistaa paras mahdollinen käyttäjäkokemus loppukäyttäjälle. Mieltä lämmittävää tietysti tässä on se, että nämä ovat kaikki ilmaisia, ja kuuluvat osaksi SDK:ta.

Loppukäyttäjän kokemukseen liittyy olennaisesti myös Mangon myötä tapahtunut kehitysalustojen yhdistämismahdollisuus. Nopeaan 2D/3D grafiikkaan etupäässä soveltuva XNA on nyt mahdollista upottaa Silverlightiin, joka taas on enemmänkin perinteisten sovellusten tekemistä varten oleva alusta. Tämä yhdistys mahdollistaa vaikkapa näyttävän kauppapaikkasovelluksen, joka on muuten Metro-designin mukainen,  mutta jossa tuotteesta on esimerkiksi 3D -malli käyttäjän pyöriteltäväksi.  Tämän yhdistämisen nerokkuus piilee siinä, kuinka helppoa on Mangossa sekoittaa perinteisiä käyttöliittymäkontrolleja sekä näyttävää laitteistokiihdytettyä 3D grafiikkaa. Kokemuksiemme pohjalta tällaisen toteutus vie Mangolla parhaimmillaan vain muutamia tunteja, kun aiemmin tälläiseen olisi mennyt useita päiviä.

Tausta-ajo kolmannen osapuolen ohjelmistoille on myös eräs isoja muutoksia Mangon myötä. Tosin tämän toteutus onkin hyvin erilainen verrattuna muihin alustoihin, sillä varsinaisesti oma ohjelma ei jää taustalle pyörimään, vaan taustatehtävät annetaan alustan omille agenteille suoritettavaksi. Nämä agentit pyörähtävät tietyin väliajoin ja rajatun ajan, joten tausta-ajo vaativat ohjelmat pitää suunnitella hieman erilaisella arkkitehduurilla kun muissa alustoissa. Tätä ei voi mustavalkoisesti luokitella heikkoudeksi eikä vahvuudeksi, vaan se on erilainen lähestymistapa siihen, kuinka sallitaan tausta-ajo kolmansille osapuolille, sekä silti annetaan paras mahdollinen akun kesto käyttäjälle.

Yhteenvetona sanoisin että kokemuksemme pohjalta Mango ei ole vain pieni päivitys olemassaolevaan, vaan sen myötä koko alusta on kuin aivan uusi ympäristö. Monet asiat on muuttuneet, paljon on tullut uutta ja edelleen tietysti löytyy parantamista, mutta kokonaisuutena se on hyvin positiivinen uudistus. Sillä voi tehdä jo lähes kaiken saman kuin Symbianilla ja iPhonella, ja vieläpä monet asiat paljon helpommin kuin kilpaileville alustoille.

As the leading global partner for cutting edge expertise on Windows Azure, Windows Phone and Microsoft Mediaroom, Symbio helps companies transition new technology platforms and new market opportunities. Symbio offers a one-stop solution to create advanced cloud applications and services which support all major mobile platforms, such as Windows Phone, iOS, Android, webOS, ensuring fully optimized user experiences across any Internet-enabled device.

We invite you to meet the Symbio team and see our latest technology demos. You can find us at Booth 1136, in Hall K. To set-up a meeting, please contact petri.talala(at)symbio.com or olav.nedrelid(at)symbio.com.

Event website: www.digitalwpc.com

Adding Cloud Computing, Enterprise and Social Collaboration Expertise

Founded in 2005, Ethos Technologies has built a range of solutions on various social cloud platforms in industries such as retail, media and entertainment. Ethos was one of the first companies to develop a commercialized solution on the Windows Azure platform and has been widely recognized as the leading R&D service partner for Azure in China. The acquisition of Ethos also adds significant expertise for Symbio in other areas such as Amazon EC2, Google AppEngine, Drupal and Microsoft Dynamics. Through this acquisition, Symbio can now offer a one-stop solution to create advanced cloud applications and services which support all major mobile platforms, such as Windows Phone, iOS, Android, webOS, ensuring fully optimized user experiences across any Internet-enabled device.

"Symbio acquired Ethos Technologies for its success and cutting-edge engineering competencies in social and cloud computing solutions,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “With this acquisition, Symbio furthers its strategy of delivering innovation co-creation solutions focused around ubiquitous computing with mobile cloud services.”

Olav Nedrelid, CEO of Ethos, added, “We are delighted to join Symbio, the global leader in innovation and R&D services. With this union, we can bring Ethos’ established offerings and solutions to a much wider audience, perfectly complementing Symbio’s strong leadership in mobile and device technologies. Cloud + Mobile + Device are the key ingredients in the ‘consumerization of enterprise IT’, and we can now really help innovators around the world drive this exciting trend forward.”
 

About Symbio
Symbio, a leading software foundry, provides software product engineering and R&D co-creation services to the world’s technology innovators. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, PayPal, Microsoft and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, Cupertino, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com

About Ethos Technologies
Ethos Technologies offers clients a range of enterprise solutions built on social cloud platforms based on Microsoft and open source technologies, enabling them to unlock the huge potential of cloud computing. Ethos has the first and only Microsoft Azure Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) in China, and has been featured in events such as the keynote at Microsoft’s 2010 TechEd Beijing. Headquartered in Beijing, Ethos Technologies has subsidiaries in Norway and Sweden. www.ethos.com.cn

LabVIEW -käyttäjäkokous tapaaminen tarjoaa oivan mahdollisuuden tavata muita LabVIEW -kehittäjiä ja saada uusia ideoita ja kontakteja sekä paljon muuta. Tilaisuus sopii kaikentasoisille LabVIEW -käyttäjille noviisista asiantuntijaan.

Verkostoidu. Uusien kontaktien luominen ja vanhojen tapaaminen on tilaisuuden parasta antia.

Opi asiantuntijoiltamme. Asiantuntijoillamme on painavaa substanssiosaamista. Ota esityksistä kaikki irti ja kehitä itseäsi ammatillisesti.

Kysy mitä olet aina halunnut tiedää LabVIEWstä. Esityksien jälkeen tarjoamme virvokkeita ja pientä purtavaa. Sinulla on mahdollisuus esittää kysymyksiä ja keskustella Symbion ja NI:n asiantuntijoiden kanssa LabVIEW:sta ja National Instrumentsin tuotteista.

Toivottavasti pääset tulemaan – TERVETULOA!

Aika: Torstaina 8.6.2011 klo 9-11

Paikka: Hiomotie 32, 00380 Helsinki (Symbion toimisto Pitäjänmäellä)

Katso kartalta sijainti:
http://maps.google.fi/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=218370695665180818771.0004a378d2670678d79de&ll=60.220425,24.870235&spn=0.008867,0.021865&z=16&iwloc=0004a378d2689571dd233

Ilmoittautuminen: lähetä yhteystietosi osoitteeseen event@fi.symbio.com 3.6. mennessä. Englanninkielinen ohjelma löytyy sivulta: www.symbio.com/fi/lvugm

Alustava ohjelma

9:00 - 9:15 Rekisteröityminen

9:15 - 10:30 Lightning talks – lyhyitä asiantuntija-alustuksia

• Edistyksellisten käyttöliittymien rakentaminen LabVIEW:llä (National Instruments)
  Vinkkejä käyttöliittymäkomponenttien toteuttamiseen

• Loggaus (Jan Klasson, Symbio, esitys on englanniksi)
  Yleiset toiminnot ohjelman statuksen, virheraporttien ja testitulosten näyttämiseen. Eri tiedostotyyppien kuten HTML:n tukeminen

• Miten käsitellä suuria tietomääriä? (Jaakko Kerola, Symbio)
  Vinkkejä tiedonkeruun ohjelmointiin

• FPGA-ohjelmointi LabVIEW:n avulla (Samuli Bergström, National Instruments)
  FPGA-piirien ohjelmoinnin edut, toiminnan periaatteet, ohjeita alkuunpääsyyn

• TCP ja UDP kommunikaatio (Jaakko Kerola, Symbio)
  LabVIEW:ssa TCP- ja UDP-toiminnot ovat yllättävän helppoja ohjelmoida, mutta näytämme myös hieman monimutkaisempia käyttötapoja.

10.30 - 11:00 Kysy LabVIEW:stä ja tarjoilua

Jos haluat lisätietoa tilaisuudesta tai LabVIEW-käyttäjäkokouksesta, lähetä (mieluiten englanninkielinen) viesti osoitteeseen: event@fi.symbio.com

Tervetuloa!

LabVIEW användarforum är tillfället att möta och diskutera med andra LabVIEW-utvecklare, få nya idéer, knyta nya kontakter, lyssna på presentationer mm. Forumet riktar sig till alla LabVIEW-användare, såväl nyblivna som experter.

Kom och träffa andra LabVIEW-utvecklare

Det kanske viktigaste med ett sådant här forum är möjligheten att möta andra LabVIEW-användare och knyta nya kontakter.

Vill du veta mer?
För att anmäla dig - klicka på den ort du är intresserad av.

Stockholm: Tisdagen den 24/5:
Anmäl dig här
Malmö: Onsdagen den 25/5:
Anmäl dig här

Agenda Stockholm & Malmö

• 8:15 - 8:30 Registrering

• 8:30 - 9:30 Lightning talks

  Loggning

  Generiska loggfunktioner för visning av exekveringsstatus, felrapportering och test resultat. Stöd för flera utdata-format, bla HTML.

  Hantering av stora datamängder

  Tips för datainsamling, t. ex. DAQ.

  Intro till att programmera FPGA i LV

  Vad kan FPGA vara bra till, hur fungerar det och hur kommer man igång.

  TCP och UDP kommunikation

  Det är lättare än man tror i LabVIEW att använda dessa funktioner. Vi visar hur man gör det lite mer komplicerat.

• 9.30 - 10:00 Fråga om LabVIEW samt frukost!

For more information about this event and/or the LabView User Group in English, please contact event.se@symbio.com.

Symbio and SIME are honored to invite you to the Co-Innovation Summit in Stockholm on May 27, 2011.

Continuous innovation and fast time-to-market are key prerequisites if you want to be a winner in today's competitive market place. The technological complexity and possibilities to adopt new emerging technologies pose however challenges for most companies.

The notions of product co-creation and co-innovation, one of the most notable innovation trends according to Business Week, offer interesting possibilities for cutting-edge companies in all industries when it comes to mastering these challenges.

In the Summit our renowned speakers will shed light on successful product co-creation and co-innovation strategies. During a couple of intensive hours you will learn about the art of innovation and global innovation trends from Silicon Valley to China. In addition three innovation managers will share their insights on key success factors in innovation and three Swedish growth companies will tell how they are using co-innovation to stay at the top.

The hosts of the event are renowned co-innovation leaders with global expertise: Symbio's CEO Jacob Hsu, who has been ranked by CEO Magazine as one of the most important new leaders in Asia and SIME's Ola Ahlvarsson, a jury member of World Economic Forum's Tech Pioneers.

If you are interested in attending the Innovation Summit, please fill-in the Registration Form and we will then confirm your participation.  Welcome!

Agenda

08:30 The Art of Innovation
Ola Ahlvarsson, Innovations starts with an attitude.
A journey through innovation companies like Apple, Microsoft, Googol, Facebook and other innovation systems.

09:15 Global Innovation Outlook – From Silicon Valley to Beijing
Jake Hsu, CEO Symbio

09:45 Innovation Buzz – Innovation Managers About the Keys to Successful Innovation
Listen to Björn Isaksson, Head of Innovation Labs at Telenor; Nicolas Moch, Head of Innovation at SEB, and others

10:45 Why Innovation Fails
Dariush Ghatan, Founder of Googol, Sweden's leading innovations consultant

11:15 Co-Creating Innovation – Learn from the entrepreneurs
Panel with Jacob Hsu, CEO at Symbio; Andreas Bernström, CEO at Rebtel; John Elvesjö, CTO and Co-Founder at Tobii, and others

11:45 – 13.00 How to Get Started - Knowledge Sharing Lunch Discussion
Knowledge sharing lunch with table talks on focus session areas. Introduction by Anders Carlsarv, Symbio.

• Software co-creation – Use the global playground to win in your market.
• Mobile megatrends – A convergence strategy to explore the mobile opportunity
• Thought leader session – Quality in your product development.
• Making ideas happen - Leverage the Clouds.

Symbio is committed to develop the MeeGo ecosystem together with world-leading clients in different industries. We have an extensive track record in helping our clients develop compelling MeeGo based applications and products with unique user experience. Symbio has in-depth expertise in cross platform implementations, for which MeeGo has excellent capabilities.

We are pleased to meet you at the MeeGo conference and discuss how we could add value to your product strategy. If you wish to get in touch before the event or to book a meeting with us, please contact: Mr. Seppo Kolari; seppo.kolari (at) symbio.com

For more information on the event, please visit: http://sf2011.meego.com/

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Symbio will be showcasing its mobile Linux expertise at the Mobile Dev Camp. You are most welcome to meet us at the Symbio stand and to see learn more about us and what we are doing. Symbio's Juha-Matti Liukkonen, a key note speaker at the event, will share his insights on efficient architecture independent apps using Python and QML to the attendees.

Symbio's value as a renewed product co-creation partner to world's innovators is based on our in-depth understanding of and long experience in cross platform implementations and demanding integration challenges of the mobile technologies and embedded systems. Mastering the complete software stack between hardware and content, Symbio's global organization can help implement stunning user experiences and high-quality product and services.

Looking forward to seeing you at the Mobile Dev Camp!

More information on the event: http://www.mobiledevcamp.fi/

With the strategic partnership with drawElements, Symbio further expands its product development service offering in the area of graphics and multimedia on Android and Windows Phone 7 Series. Symbio will provide services built on top of the recently launched drawElements Quality Program (dEQP) that puts OpenGL ES 2.0 drivers to the test.

Symbio’s dEQP services benefit everyone involved in making high-end graphics a reality in the embedded space; from the GPU design team and silicon providers, to the device manufacturers and application developers. In addition to delivering quality assurance and providing test results of the strengths, weaknesses, and incompatibilities of OpenGL ES 2.0 implementations, Symbio provides product design and engineering consulting services to transform those test results into better and more reliable applications and devices that delight end users.

"Graphics and multimedia capabilities are clearly mission critical for mobile applications. To succeed in today’s highly competitive marketplace, device manufacturers and software developers need to provide the best user experience, and that requires laser focus on providing rock solid stability and the best possible graphics implementations," explained Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “With services built on top of the dEQP tool, we help our clients attract consumers by ensuring their devices and applications are best-in-class.”

"dEQP was born from our noble plans to make the world a somewhat better place for our fellow developers. With dEQP, the industry will have a standard way to measure the quality of the multimedia APIs and continuously improve their quality. In the future, dEQP will be expanded to cover all major upcoming multimedia APIs and continue to support the latest standards," explains Panu Wilska, CEO of drawElements.

Symbio will showcase its graphics and multimedia services and product engineering expertise at Mobile World Congress 2011. The Symbio team will be present at the Axel Technologies Hospitality Suite, 3.1HS157.

For more information:

drawElements
Panu Wilska, CEO
Tel +358 400 155 951
panu.wilska (at) drawelements.com
www.drawelements.com

Symbio
Jacob Hsu, CEO
Tel +86 10 8278 4012
jacob.hsu (at) symbio.com
www.symbio.com

About drawElements
drawElements is a software expert company focused on computer graphics technologies for the embedded space. Our main product is the drawElements Quality Program, a benchmarking system for measuring the quality of GPUs and their drivers. Our crew has also been working on related technologies such as run-time optimized blitters, OpenGL ES 2.0 drivers and software rasterizers. drawElements is based out of Helsinki, Finland. http://www.drawelements.com

About Symbio
Symbio, a leading software foundry, provides software product engineering and R&D co-creation services to the world’s technology innovators. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, PayPal, Microsoft and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, Cupertino, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com

###
OpenGL is a registered trademark and the OpenGL ES and OpenGL SC logos are trademarks of Silicon Graphics International used under license by Khronos. All other product names, trademarks, and/or company names are used solely for identification and belong to their respective owners.

“With our broad expertise on Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7 Series combined with Ethos Technologies’ deep expertise and proprietary IP with public and private clouds, Symbio can deliver new and exciting applications and services to help our clients win in the marketplace,” explained Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “This is a great opportunity for Symbio to further strengthen our digital convergence solution portfolio and enable our clients to create tomorrow’s winning products.”

“Ethos Technologies is very excited to partner with Symbio as we both share the passion of making digital convergence between communications and computing a reality,” said Olav Nedrelid, CEO of Ethos Technologies. “Converged technology will transform the way we use our mobile devices, and we are delighted to develop cloud computing based services together with Symbio.”

Symbio will showcase its R&D innovation services and product engineering expertise at Mobile World Congress 2011. The Symbio team will be present at the Axel Technologies Hospitality Suite, 3.1HS157.

For more information:

Ethos Technologies
Olav Nedrelid, CEO
Tel +86 10 6296 8255
olav.nedrelid (at) ethos.com.cn
www.ethos.com.cn

Symbio
Jacob Hsu, CEO
Tel +86 10 8278 4012
jacob.hsu (at) symbio.com
www.symbio.com

About Ethos Technologies
Ethos Technologies offers a range of enterprise solutions built on social cloud platforms based on various Microsoft and open source technologies, all focused on a general goal of helping businesses leverage the huge potential of cloud computing. Headquartered in Beijing, Ethos Technologies is the preferred partner in Greater China on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.. The company was founded in 2005 and has 150 employees with expertise from all 6 continents. Ethos Technologies currently has operations in China, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. http://www.ethos.com.cn

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and engineering outsourcing services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies and scale up their product delivery pipelines. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Nokia and PayPal already rely on Symbio to bring new products to market with the highest quality, speed, cost-efficiency, and innovation. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the product co-creation partner companies trust to deliver integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, www.symbio.com.

Meet up with Symbio at the Global Electronics Forum (GEF)and Global Semiconductor Forum ( GSF) in Singapore to learn how Symbio has helped its clients in demanding product development projects.

Symbio’s value as a software R&D partner to world’s innovators is based on extensive understanding of mobile and embedded systems. Through the ability to address the complete system software stack from applications to middleware, OS integration and drivers, Symbio’s global organization can deliver high quality software for user experience driven applications.

We are pleased to meet you to discuss cooperation possibilities. To request a meeting, please contact us at marketing@symbio.com.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Meet Symbio at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to learn how Symbio has helped its clients through demanding software product development projects.

Symbio's value as a software R&D partner to the world's innovators is based on an extensive understanding of mobile and embedded systems. Through the ability to address the complete system software stack from applications to middleware, OS integration and drivers, Symbio's global organization can deliver high quality software for user experience driven applications.

We are pleased to meet you to discuss cooperation possibilities. To request a meeting, please contact us at marketing@symbio.com.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Meet Symbio at the imagina 2011 in Monte-Carlo, France to learn how Symbio has helped its clients in demanding software product development projects.

Symbio’s value as a software R&D partner to world’s innovators is based on an extensive understanding of mobile and embedded systems. Through the ability to address the complete system software stack from applications to middleware, OS integration and drivers, Symbio’s global organization can deliver high quality software for user experience driven applications.

We are pleased to meet you to discuss cooperation possibilities. To request a meeting, please contact us at marketing@symbio.com

Event Website: www.imagina.mc

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

You are welcome to meet Symbio at Axel Technologies to discuss and see the most advanced demos and cases on converged technology, including the first TV application for personalising a content stream by blending content choices from broadcast TV, mobile TV, Internet videos and social media.

Location: South Hall Upper Level & Connector -3682

Event Website: www.cesweb.org

Looking forward to seeing you there!

GENIVI Penthouse Suite
Trump International Hotel
2000 Fashion Show Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89109

High-performance graphics acceleration in In-Vehicle Infotainment systems

The automotive industry is a hotbed of activity as in-vehicle infotainment systems become a key competitive differentiator. Automotive head units and infotainment systems are moving towards open development through platforms like GENIVI which provide a common software architecture for automotive cluster and applications. As automotive UIs use the same technology as mobile device UIs --including the usage of realistic graphics effects and transitions -- this presents an opportunity for expanded use of OpenGL ES 2.0. The GENIVI Graphics framework and requirements for OpenGL ES 2.0 are to provide unified APIs on automotive graphics services. You are welcome to meet Symbio and learn how the automotive industry can leverage 3D graphics in IVI, as well as how an independent software development and product engineering house is combining its Khronos and GENIVI experience.

The Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Finland 2010, now in its sixth year, ranks the fastest growing companies in Finland based on their revenue growth over a consecutive five year period.

Symbio ranked 36 with 201% growth over the past five years.

“We are honored to be recognized as a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Finland 2010 company,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “Symbio’s focus on being our clients’ co-creation and software product foundry partner helps bring next-generation technology products to the market. Our expertise in user experience optimization, mobile and embedded systems, Web services and enterprise software allows us to create winning technology solutions across the entire software stack. By leveraging our specialized IP assets and global delivery network in North America, Europe and Asia, we create value in today’s age of digital convergence.”

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and engineering outsourcing services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies and scale up their product delivery pipelines. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Nokia and PayPal already rely on Symbio to bring new products to market with the highest quality, speed, cost-efficiency, and innovation. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the product co-creation partner companies trust to deliver integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, www.symbio.com.

LOCATION: Beijing, Mainland China, Taipei, Taiwan and Seoul, South Korea

Join Symbio at the upcoming Qt Developer Conference in Asia, the event where you can learn – directly from the developers who make Qt - how you can make better use of Qt and Qt Creator.

With expertise in Qt, you will be able to improve your projects and get your products to market faster on major embedded and desktop platforms, including MeeGo, Embedded Linux, Windows CE/Mobile and others.

Visit the Symbio booth, and watch a demo of a mobile TV application built by our team utilizing Qt technology. Symbio is a global leader in mobile software development and services. Our specialists are well versed in working with Qt technology throughout the software stack, ranging from low-level framework adaptation to building new applications and services using Qt. Moreover, our experts have in-depth knowledge of multimedia and graphics technologies, hardware capabilities, challenging software integration and implementation issues, helping to deliver maximum performance and superior user experiences on any types of devices.

Symbio's domain expertise ranges from mobile handsets to consumer devices, to home media, industrial systems and automotive infotainment systems.

For additional information about the Qt Developer Conference in Asia, visit
Beijing: http://qt.nokia.com/about-us-cn/events/qt-conference-beijing-2010
Taipei: http://qt.nokia.com/forms/event-registration-forms/reg-conference-taipei-2010/
Seoul: http://qt.nokia.com/about-us-kr/events/qt-conference-seoul-2010/

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

According to Cashklick's partner Inmar, the US-based leading promotion transaction settlement provider, brands issued 367 billion coupons in 2009, but only 3.3 billion coupons were redeemed. As consumers adopt a more conscious approach to spending, and distribution channels expand to include both offline and online, there is a crying need for a powerful and ubiquitous coupon redemption system.

"Symbio was chosen as our software development partner because of the company's focus on digital convergence and deep expertise in payment and Web-technologies," said Christian Duroux, CEO of Cashklick, Inc. "With the flexibility of Symbio's global service delivery network in North America, Europe and Asia, coupled with its record in providing R&D services, it is the perfect co-creation partner to scale with and decrease our product's time-to-market."

"Symbio is excited to partner with Cashklick and revolutionize the payment process for both consumers and merchants," said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. "Cashklick's vision in accelerating the growth of digital coupons is a perfect example of how technology challenges the status quo, revolutionizing payments and the coupon industry. We are delighted to play a strategic co-creative role and help to actualize Cashklick's innovation."

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and and engineering outsourcing services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies and scale up their product delivery pipelines. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Nokia and PayPal already rely on Symbio to bring new products to market with the highest quality, speed, cost-efficiency, and innovation. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the product co-creation partner companies trust to deliver integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, www.symbio.com.

About Cashklick
In an era of convergence of services at checkout, Cashklick's mission is to empower consumers to turn coupons into cash™ on their debit or credit cards. Cashklick introduces the "save coupons to payment cards" at publishers and provides retailers with an innovative technology for rapid, automated and secure coupon redemption at checkout. Cashklick is an easy to implement solution for driving more customers into stores. Contact info at www.cashklick.com.

SOURCE Symbio

Media & Analyst Relations Contact
Emily Chong
Symbio
Tel: +86-10-8278-4012
Email: emily.chong@symbio.com

The competition, held between June 1 - September 15, 2010, invited developers, students and other professionals located across Greater China to create applications that incorporated various components of IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) Developer Edition, the product that delivers a complete range of BI capabilities (reporting, analysis, dashboards and scorecards) on a single, service-oriented architecture (SOA). Participants accessed IBM developerWorks, a web-based professional network and technical resource, to download the product, and submitted applications were rated on levels of originality, quality, user experience, as well as relevance to IBM and Symbio's clients.

Grand prize winner Hong Zhou Zheng created an application that showcased how the reporting and analytical capabilities of Cognos 8 can help consumer electronic companies in China manage their inventories, evaluate profit-and-loss statements across different business units, and leverage the data for critical business decisions.

"Companies in Greater China across all industries increasingly need to adopt business analytics into their operations," said Frank Ouyang, Senior Manager, Cognos Software Development, Business Analytics, IBM China Development Lab. "As a result, it is important to educate and train the local community on IBM's BI capabilities, helping them improve decision making and competitive advantage. Symbio has been a fantastic business partner in facilitating this initiative, and I'm pleased with the applications developed by our competition's participants."

Many of the competition's participants were members of the Cognos China User Group, a network sponsored by Symbio that encourages the sharing of experiences, insights and knowledge about IBM Cognos software amongst members located in Greater China. The user group boasts over 10,000 registered members, making it one of the largest Cognos-related communities in the world.

"The winners of the 2010 Cognos China Developer Competition exemplified deep expertise in BI capabilities, and the developed solutions will help increase our clients' operational efficiencies," said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. "We will continue to foster the local community, helping companies utilize business analytics to create a smarter and interconnected world."

Winners of the 2010 Cognos China Developer Competition include:

• Grand prize winner: Hong Zhou Zheng
• Second prize winners: Wu Zhong Hua, Liu Meng
• Third prize winners: Cui Bei Bei, Shi Jian Chao, Li Qiang

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and and engineering outsourcing services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies and scale up their product delivery pipelines. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Nokia and PayPal already rely on Symbio to bring new products to market with the highest quality, speed, cost-efficiency, and innovation. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the product co-creation partner companies trust to deliver integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, www.symbio.com.

About Cognos China User Group
The Cognos China User Group, sponsored by Symbio, is a fast-growing community of developers, students and professionals located in Greater China who are interested in sharing their experiences and insights about IBM Cognos software. Participating users can visit www.cognosusersgroup.com to find tutorials, videos, installation and configuration tips, as well as forum boards to learn more about Cognos and its features. Members of the user group come from a wide-range of industries, from state-owned enterprises, to retail and financial services organizations. Today, the network boasts over 10,000 members, making it one of the largest Cognos-related communities in the world.

SOURCE Symbio

Media & Analyst Relations Contact
Emily Chong
Symbio
Tel: +86-10-8278-4012
Email: emily.chong@symbio.com

LOCATION:  Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland

Meet Symbio at the first annual MeeGo Conference, hosted by Nokia and Intel. This conference will bring together MeeGo developers, OSVs, OEMs, and other MeeGo project contributors.  Brian McGillion from Symbio will be speaking about the cost of security.

The cost of security, a developers view.

Security in many cases is an afterthought and rarely is much consideration given to the price that a developer has to pay in order to secure an application. The price, that this hands on demo will focus on, is the learning curve that must be overcome to generate a secure application and how using the 'MeeGo Security Framework' greatly reduces this overhead. This demo will take an existing Qt application that contains some common functionality and secure it using the intuitive API that is provided by MSF. Throughout the demo, the security will be built up layer by layer until at the end we have a more secure application that demonstrates the wealth of functionality that is available from MSF.

Topics covered:

• API
• Credentials - provide, request, checking
• Secure storage - for configurations and settings
• Encryption - private and shared
• Non-code related configration
• Building the package
• Installing and running the package
• Deploying the package

More information: http://conference2010.meego.com/session/cost-security-developers-view

Join Symbio at Qt Developer Days, the only event where you can learn – directly from the developers who make Qt - how you and your employer can make better use of Qt and Qt Creator.

With expertise in Qt, you will be able to improve your projects and get your products to market faster on major embedded and desktop platforms including Symbian, MeeGo and Embedded Linux.

Visit the Symbio booth at the event, where you can see a demo of a mobile TV application built by our team, utilizing Qt technology. Symbio is a global leader in mobile software development and services. Our expertise ranges from mobile handsets to netbooks, to other electronic and embedded devices, covering all technology layers.

Symbio will also attend upcoming Qt developer events in Beijing and Taipei. Stay tuned!

To schedule a meeting with the Symbio team, contact marketing@symbio.com.

For more information about Qt Developer Days, visit http://qt.nokia.com/qtdevdays2010/

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Symbio will be speaking at the upcoming GENIVI Members Meeting, to be held in Dearborn Michigan.

OpenGL ES 2.0: 3D Graphics and In-Vehicle Infotainment

The automotive industry is a hotbed of activity as in-vehicle infotainment systems become a key competitive differentiator.  Automotive head units and infotainment systems are moving towards open development through platforms like Genivi which provide a common software architecture for automotive cluster and applications.  As automotive UIs use the same technology as mobile device UIs --including the usage of realistic graphics effects and transitions -- this presents an opportunity for expanded use of OpenGL ES 2.0.  The Genivi Graphics framework and requirements for OpenGL ES 2.0 are to provide unified APIs on automotive graphics services.  This session will review the state of the automotive industry as it relates to 3D graphics and IVI and presents a compelling case study on how an independent SW development house / product engineering house is combining its Khronos and Genivi experience.

• Tools to verify graphics performance expectations
• Tools to enable graphics content and usage in automotive platforms

Attendees will also see a demo(s) - an advanced Automotive Metering system based on OpenGL ES 2.0

To learn more about Symbio's graphics and in-vehicle infotainment expertise, click here.

This meeting is for GENIVI members only.  To learn more about GENIVI, visit http://www.genivi.org/

Space, the Forgotten Frontier

The Alternative Party in Helsinki, Finland has a long history of being THE EVENT of digital culture, attracting hundreds of passionate programmers, musicians and visualists around the world to exploit the possibilities of computers to create stunning demos and music.

The event combines a unique way of technology and art - but also science and business. As a renowned foregoer in graphics and multimedia technologies, Symbio has been partnering with the ALT Party for many years.

This year’s event features some out-of-the-space compos and the most talented scenes of digital culture, and electronic music you can find.

Join us at the ALT Party and hang-out at the Symbio bar! We can offer you great possibilities to pursue your passion in an exciting work environment. Let us tell you what it is like to work at Symbio!

WELCOME!

Venue:  Cable Factory (Kaapelitehdas), Tallberginkatu, Ruoholahti, Helsinki

http://www.altparty.org/main.html

LOCATION:
Sheraton Hotel
Tegelbacken 6, Box 195
101 23 Stockholm Sweden

This annual summit will bring together key technology decision makers from the largest Nordic and Baltic organizations and selected solution providers.

With the global economy recovering, CIOs continue to seek ground-breaking technologies that will fight complexity and minimize waste, and are looking to reach higher collaboration levels with solution providers to drive efficiency into, and costs out of, their operations.

Symbio can help companies select and invest in the appropriate suite of enterprise solutions, and also identify the best ways to integrate them. Mapping complex business critical processes to software systems and managing the multitude of dependencies and integration with other systems is truly a challenge. Furthermore, Symbio's quality assurance and testing are two of the most critical components to maintaining a competitive edge. We believe that proactive software quality assurance is the key to cost savings, decreased risks, and successful projects.

Nordic CIO Summit is hosted by Marcus Evans. More information: http://www.nordic-cio.com/

According to a recent Broadband and Digitally-Connected Home report by Lee Ratliff, senior analyst at iSuppli, the leading market research firm focused on the electronics value chain, global shipments of IPTV STBs are projected to grow to 28.7 million units in 2010, up 48 percent from 19.4 million in 2009. Shipments will also rise at a 25 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2009 to 2014.

Microsoft Mediaroom is the world’s most deployed IPTV platform, with a global customer base delivering services to more than five million subscriber households. Mediaroom is also enjoying increased deployments in emerging geographies and segments, where the business models can demand low-cost set-top boxes with high performance to ensure highly engaging user experiences.

“Symbio provides an efficient global service delivery network spanning multiple continents,” said Steve Koepp, Senior Manager, Business Development, Media Platforms Business, Microsoft Corporation. “As a set top box testing partner, Symbio supports Microsoft’s goals of further scaling the Mediaroom set-top box OEM ecosystem and providing Mediaroom-based operators with more set-top box choices.”

“Symbio is delighted to leverage our expertise in advanced product development and next generation entertainment services to work with Microsoft Mediaroom,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “Our focus on creating great user experiences and expertise around tight integration between hardware and software enable us to serve a strategic co-creation role, delivering digital TV services to the global market.”

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and and engineering outsourcing services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in& mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies and scale up their product delivery pipelines. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Nokia and PayPal already rely on Symbio to bring new products to market with the highest quality, speed, cost-efficiency, and innovation. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the product co-creation partner companies trust to deliver integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, www.symbio.com.

Microsoft and Mediaroom are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

How to Make the Most Out of Graphics Acceleration

Symbio’s Konsta Hansson and Jarkko Kemppainen will be speaking on Tuesday, September 21 about “How to Make the Most Out of Graphics Acceleration.”

In this session you will learn about different embedded graphics technologies and components. The goal is to give you an understanding of what is required for the successful implementation of graphics-intensive applications.

Today's visually driven UI's/HMI's are dependent on the efficient use of embedded graphics acceleration. In this session, we'll take a look at the different graphics technologies, content creation tools and ecosystem, as well as what is needed to guarantee a well-performing visual experience in an embedded device.

For additional information:
https://www.cmpevents.com/ESCe10/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=11346

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

The 2010 GS100 Provider list and associated sub-lists represent companies that serve global clients through advanced global delivery models, have broad portfolios of service offerings or niche leadership, and have demonstrated business excellence. Companies who participated in the survey shared exhaustive information through an online survey, and the top 100 list and names in the categories were derived using a scientific research methodology based on over 200 data points and several qualitative parameters designed by Global Services and NeoAdvisory’s practice experts.

As companies face increased competition and multifaceted challenges, such as shrinking product life-cycles, growing technical complexities, shorter release cycles and increased demand for faster time-to-market, there is a greater need for leaders to shift their focus on innovation and differentiation in order to attract and retain clients as well as enhance existing relationships.

“There is a recognition in large companies that outsourcing as a means to reduce costs has had its time; these companies are increasingly looking at service providers being able to make their operations more effective globally and even to transform key areas of their business. The GS100 companies are the ones who are delivering on these fronts and are equipped to demonstrate new forms of value in outsourcing to their clients,” says Atul Vashistha, Chairman, NeoAdvisory.

“We are honored to be selected as a 2010 GS100 provider,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “Symbio’s focus on being our clients’ co-creation and outsourced product development partner helps bring cutting-edge technology products to the market. Our expertise in user experience optimization, mobile and embedded systems, Web services and enterprise software allows us to create winning technology solutions across the entire software stack. By leveraging our global delivery network in North America, Europe and Asia, we create indispensable value in today’s age of digital convergence.”

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and user experience design services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, PayPal and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

About Global Services and GS100
Global Services, a media platform by CyberMedia, serves the global ITO and BPO industry through quality content, research, services, and marketing solutions. A multi-shore team spanning the U.S.A. and India drives the Global Services brand. The Global Services brand is an integrated media platform that includes the website globalservicesmedia.com, conferences, research, webinars, e-magazines, custom publishing, and various other content delivery formats. GS100 is the annual survey and analysis of the global ITO-BPO industry done by Global Services in association with NeoAdvisory. The survey recognizes service provider excellence and maturity to serve the global market. The GS100 is a benchmark in the global ITO and BPO industry because of its rigorous methodology, exhaustive coverage, and value to the services buyer community.

About NeoAdvisory
Neo Advisory is a consulting and advisory firm that enables organizational transformation by leveraging outsourcing and globalization, while ensuring that their clients become “Great Globalizers”. Through a blend of consulting and implementation, backed by a robust knowledge database and hands on experience of consultants, NeoAdvisory provides objective and actionable advice and help clients to truly leverage Globalization and Outsourcing. The company provides consulting and advisory services in globalization, sourcing, vendor management, transition management, performance management, and governance.

NI researchers implemented the new features suggested by lead users through the company’s LabVIEW Idea Exchange, an online feedback forum that marks a significant new level of collaboration between NI R&D and customers.

“We introduced the NI Idea Exchange last year, and during the course of the year we had thousands of ideas as in the product feedback forum where our R&D engineers and users work together to submit ideas, collaborate on their development, and vote for the ones they like best,” said John Graff, vice president of marketing at NI.

In addition, LabVIEW 2010 code executes an average of 20 percent faster via a low-level virtual machine software complier. The open source compiler enabling the speedup has also been adopted by Apple, Adobe and Google.

Other software update releases came from NI’s partners.

For example, Symbio, a certified National Instruments alliance partner, has released the latest version of its Goop (Graphical Object Oriented Development) at NI Week 2010.

Symbio's Goop development suite 4 is the only Unified Modeling Language (UML) tool built in and integrated with NI’s LabVIEW.

According to NI, Suite 4 enables LabVIEW users to fully extend the capabilities of the built-in object-oriented programming features of the LabVIEW graphical system design platform.

"Symbio's in-depth understanding of LabVIEW has enabled them to deliver an extremely powerful tool for LabVIEW users that require UML documentation," said Francis Griffiths, vice president of European sales for National Instruments. "Symbio's suite 4 makes it easy for users to document both small and large-scale design projects quickly as well as apply object-oriented programming practices to their LabVIEW applications."

In his keynote on NI Week day 2 company co-founder Jeff Kodosky, NI Business and Technology Fellow and inventor of LabView in 1986, remarked that NI is researching a system-level approach to graphical system design, one ”whose code is not dependent on WAIT statements, but specified by a deadline”.

“All that matters is that one agrees that the timing of end points such as a sensor and an actuator are defined in a system-level code.” Kodosky said that NI researchers are exploring the good, the bad, and the ugly of such synchronous languages as Esterel, where timing clicks in a circuit are defined by PAUSE, instead of WAIT; Giotti with its task execution timeline; and PTIDES, a Berkeley programming language where “events” not “data” specify how activities need to occur.

“We need a realistic representation of timing, and we are progressing toward that as we move to the system-level approach in LabVIEW.”

On the exhibit floor, Intel, National Instruments and Cyth Systems showed off  “Rockbot”, a robotic application that uses Intel Core 2 Quad processor running four processes on an NI PXi controller module. The controller controls a robot that plays an open source version of popular video game called Frets on Fire that imitates the commercial game Guitar Hero. In the video game players use the keyboard to play along with markers which appear on screen, and with the aim to score points, achieve a high point multiplier to complete a song. Here the song is completed by the robot in a most precise manner.

To accomplish the task each Intel processor core is virtualized with NI’s real-time hypervisor with core 1 running machine vision; core 2  runs the image analysis algorithm, core 3 the control output loop to the actuators on the robot and core 4 running the game under Windows XP.  Rockbot is used to show that an application with multi-core and virtualized embedded devices can share the same platform with a high level of determinism and isolation between task partitions.

NI Week 2010 has attracted more than 3,000 engineers, scientists, and educators, August 3-5.

GOOP Development Suite 4 enables LabVIEW users to fully extend the capabilities of the built-in object-oriented programming features of the LabVIEW graphical system design platform, saving considerable time and development effort. The company is unveiling GOOP Development Suite at NI Week, the industry's premier event on graphical system design that attracts more than 3,000 of the world's brightest engineers, educators, and scientists being held August 3-5, 2010 at the Austin Convention Center in Symbio's booth #803.

"As LabVIEW is used for larger, more mission-critical applications, the requirements for code documentation and validation become much more important," said John Pasquarette, vice president, Product Marketing, National Instruments. "The GOOP Development Suite 4 from Symbio provides users with a very powerful link between UML design and requirements documentation with their LabVIEW code, helping reduce the validation process, particularly in regulated industries, and ultimately shorten the time to market for new designs."

Adding features to existing code created by someone else, and often undocumented code is a time-consuming effort. Symbio's GOOP Development Suite 4 analyzes existing LabVIEW applications and generates a design description automatically. With this auto generated design description, users can see details of all code modules and dependencies, or visualize state machines, making it possible for them to efficiently add new features to previously undocumented code.

"Symbio is delighted to leverage its expertise in advanced product development and bring to market its latest version of its GOOP Development Suite," said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. "Developing applications with minimal time often pushes developers into the coding phase with too little analysis spent on system structure, resulting in less efficient development as a system grows. GOOP Development Suite 4 helps users quickly create a software blueprint and significantly accelerate development."

The suite's built-in object-oriented support handles classes both by value and by reference. GOOP Development Suite v4 seamlessly helps users choose which model to use for each class and provides features that save time when creating and maintaining object-oriented LabVIEW code.

"Symbio's in-depth understanding of LabVIEW has enabled them to deliver an extremely powerful tool for LabVIEW users that require UML documentation," said Francis Griffiths, vice president of European sales for National Instruments. "Symbio's GOOP Development Suite 4 makes it easy for users to document both small and large-scale design projects quickly as well as apply object-oriented programming practices to their LabVIEW applications."

GOOP Development Suite 4 includes:

• Streamlined management of LabVIEW classes plus by-reference classes integrated into the LabVIEW project environment
• The creation of a software blueprint and UML class diagram plus generation of code such as classes, VIs and icons directly from this blueprint to accelerate development
• A lightweight class template leveraging the LabVIEW Data Value Reference concept to achieve better performance
• The ability to analyze LabVIEW code and generate design documentation - UML class diagram and state diagram - visualizing classes, dependencies and state transitions
• Supported UML diagrams: state, class, sequence, package and use cases

Pricing for Symbio's GOOP Development Suite 4 starts at US$850. Visit http://www.symbio.com/goop4 to learn more about the tool, different tool editions and to download a free trial.

To arrange a meeting at NIWeek, please visit Symbio in Booth #803 or contact Riki Virc at riki.virc@symbio.com. 

About National Instruments
National Instruments is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 30,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 15 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 5,000 employees and direct operations in more than 40 countries. For the past 11 years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and user experience design services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, PayPal and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.
 

LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI and ni.com are trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

From August 3-5, engineers around the world will travel to Austin to listen, learn, and experience NI Week, the industry's premier event on graphical system design that attracts more than 3,000 of the world’s brightest engineers, educators and scientists.

Hosted by National Instruments, NIWeek 2010 will be held at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, for three days of interactive technical sessions, targeted summits, hands-on workshops, and exhibitions on the latest developments for design, control, automation, manufacturing, and test.

The 16-person strong Symbio team with 174 years of LABView expertise will unveil the GOOP Development Suite 4 at the conference. Come mingle with Symbio at booth #803, and see what GOOP 4 can do for you!

Click here to learn more about GOOP 4 and Symbio's Test and Measurements expertise!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

The Top 10 list is part of IDC's “China-Based Offshore Software Development 2010–2014 Forecast and Analysis” study. This IDC study expatiates on the current status of the China-based offshore software development market as well as vendor rankings. Key findings in the report are that China-based offshore development vendors are required to have the overall capability to fulfil customers' requirements, and foreign customers prefer outsourcing companies to set up onsite branches to better help them understand the China outsourcing scale. Also noted in the report is that some offshore companies have started to revise their strategies to explore the domestic market beyond their mature experience and methodology, leveraging their successful delivery model overseas.

With over 15 years of technology and advanced software expertise, globally-integrated delivery processes, highly scalable professionals and cutting-edge R&D solution centers in Asia, Europe and North America, Symbio has been a long-term outsourced product development partner to global leaders. The company’s focus on Web applications, mobile/embedded computing, platform and infrastructure software, as well as industry-focused applications makes it different from its competitors. With its expanded services overseas in the US and Western European markets, its R&D - solution design centers in the US, Finland and Sweden for onshore delivery needs, and major development centers in Mainland China and Taiwan for offshore delivery requirements, Symbio provides a globally integrated product development network.

“Symbio is delighted to have once again been recognized by IDC as a Top 10 China-based Off-Shore Development vendor,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “Symbio’s expansion both domestically and overseas and its decision to offer differentiated services has enabled it to further establish the company, and its domain experts as the trusted partner to deliver cutting edge technology to world leading companies.”

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and user experience design services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, PayPal and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

Join Symbio and Khronos on July 29 to discuss OpenGL ES 2.0: 3D Graphics and In-Vehicle Infotainment

The automotive industry is a hotbed of activity as in-vehicle infotainment systems become a key competitive differentiator. Automotive head units and infotainment systems are moving towards open development through platforms like GENIVI which provide a common software architecture for automotive cluster and applications. As automotive UIs use the same technology as mobile device UIs - including the usage of realistic graphics effects and transitions - this presents an opportunity for expanded use of OpenGL ES 2.0. The GENIVI Graphics framework and requirements for OpenGL ES 2.0 are to provide unified APIs on automotive graphics services.

This session will review the state of the automotive industry as it relates to 3D graphics and IVI and presents a compelling case study on how an independent software development house / product engineering house is combining its Khronos and Genivi experience.

• Tools to verify graphics performance expectations
• Tools to enable graphics content and usage in automotive platforms
• Attendees will also see a demo – an advanced Automotive Metering system based on OpenGL ES 2.0

For more information, visit:
SIGGRAPH 2010
http://www.siggraph.org

Khronos Group
http://www.khronos.org/news/events/detail/siggraph-la-2010/

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

"We are going to double our size by the end of this year," said Jacob Hsu, chief executive officer of Symbio, a software outsourcing company based in Beijing. Symbio has about 1,500 staff and Hsu expects that to grow to 3,000 as more clients place bigger projects with the company. Symbio has development centers in China, the United States, Finland, Sweden, Taiwan and Japan. Clients include many major technology companies, suchas Nokia, Eriksson, IBM, Microsoft and PayPal.

China's software outsourcing revenue from the offshore market (ie work for overseas clients) will climb to US$6.8 billion in 2013, or 16.2% of the worldwide market, from $2.4 billion in 2008, according to market researcher IDC. That is growth of 23% a year, compared with the forecast worldwide average of 6.2% over the same period.

Symbio is not alone. Beijing-based Vanceinfo Technologies, founded in 1995, has more then 9,000 staff and plans to more than double its workforce to 20,000 over the next two to three years. Vanceinfo, which is listed on the New York stock exchange, made $21.5 million profit last year on total revenues of $148.1 million. Its clients include Microsoft, Tibco (a California-based software company) and Expedia.

IDC ranked Vanceinfo as the largest Chinese offshore software development vendor for the North American and European markets, with 6.4% market share in 2008. Symbio was ranked third, with 5.4% market share, just behind Hong Kong-listed ChinaSoft International, which is given the same market share. IDC estimated Vanceinfo's revenue from offshore outsourcing to be $80.6 million in 2008 and Symbio's to be $64 million.

Price is not the key factor for Western companies to outsource their software development to China. "Compared with India, in fact, China's rate is not very cheap," said Hsu.

JP Morgan analyst Dick Wei believes Vanceinfo's bill rates are generally comparable with Indian firms on its US-based business, although its overall bill rate is about two thirds that of Indian firms.

In Hsu's view, Western companies come to China to tap a different source of talent. Most Indian firms work on IT projects for back offices, information management systems for their various business processes, and the like, said Hsu. These require people who understand the business practice of the particular trades, or so-called "domain expertise" - for example, how Citibank works internally.

India's outsourcing industry grew rapidly in the 1990s when the world's major companies in . banking, insurance and airlines required software engineers to deal inexpensively with the millennium bugs. Over the next 30 years, these companies continue to outsource their IT development to India as a way to cut costs. That allowed the India firms to learn Western business practices.

"Indian universities are very good at teaching their students about Western business processes," said Hsu. "If you want to develop some banking systems, there are many Indian software developers with the right domain expertise."

China's engagement with the world economy is more recent. "They have expertise in Chinese business processes but not Western," said Hsu. The domain expertise for developing back-end office systems, say for banks, is not there. Moreover, the language barrier makes it even harder for Chinese developers to work on projects involving Western business processing. "Overall, we expect Chinese firms to face tough competition from Indian IT services firms in this segment," said Wei of JP Morgan.

On the other hand, "China is good at basic technology and engineering. There are many universities training students to be great software engineers," said Hsu, "Also, China is a big market for technology products, such as mobile phones, Internet portals, social networks and so forth. There are huge search engines, like Baidu. Developers here can develop cutting-edge technology products."

Most of Symbio's projects are for product development , with embedded systems for mobile phones and web applications a key focus.

"In the past, outsourcing was about low-cost labor, which everyone knows and has become a commodity," said Hsu. "Now, it is about expertise - how to develop products with better quality faster and with more innovations. That is why we have development centers around the world - to tap different talents.

The 400 staff in Finland and Sweden, in particular, are for embedded mobile software. The two Nordic countries are home to global mobile-phone makers Nokia and Ericsson.

Vanceinfo is in a similar situation. Research and development (R&D) work for embedded systems and for software systems implemented in computers accounted for 63.6% of its 2010 first-quarter revenue. "Vanceinfo primarily provides R&D services to its global clients that are different from the service offerings of the Indian IT services firms," said Wei.

In the future, Hsu wants his firm to be a "foundry" for software development. "Independent foundries, like TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world's largest chip foundry] make possible a whole generation of fabless chipmakers, such as Qualcomm," said Hsu, "We want to be the TSMC for software development and allow technology companies to have no need to hire engineers."

As a foundry, TSMC makes chips for other chip suppliers such as US-based Qualcomm, a leading wireless telecommunication chip designer and supplier. Qualcomm does not have manufacturing facilities, or fabrication plants - it is "fabless" - but outsources the actual chip-making processes to foundries like TSMC. Qualcomm is the world's largest fabless chip-maker.

Sherman So is a Hong Kong-based correspondent and co-author of Red Wired: China's Internet Revolution.

Join Symbio at Open Solutions 2010, one of the first major open source events in Finland, bringing together business leaders and experts in the field. The event is an efficient full day seminar with keynotes, meetings, workshops and three parallel themes including:

• Infrastructure and data center solutions
• Business and service solutions
• Mobile and embedded solutions

Juha-Matti Liukkonen, Symbio's Technology Chief will give a presentation on "Risk Analysis of Open Source Components", helping us understand the life cycle, developer community and cost structure - when working with open source components.

The event is arranged by the Finnish Centre for Open Source Solutions(COSS).

For additional information and to register: http://opensolutions.coss.fi.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Join the Symbio team at Akademy 2010, an annual world summit of the KDE community. KDE is an international team co-operating on the development and distribution of Free, Open Source Software for desktop and portable computing.

The Akademy 2010 event features an interesting mix of talks and presentations by prominent Free Software developers, coding sessions and workshops.

For more information: http://akademy.kde.org/  

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

The educational webinar will take place on Friday, June 11 at 1pm EDT and provide concrete methods enterprises and ISVs can immediately implement to unlock value through globalized product development.

Vamsee Tirukkala, Co-founder and Managing Principal of Zinnov, LLC will present on:

• Value levers enterprises can use to optimize software development efforts and which outsourcing models work best.
• Emerging offshore locations enterprises and ISVs need to consider for software product development.
• How ISVs can release R&D dollars for new products while keeping the total R&D spend at the same level.
• How small to mid-sized software product companies can manage revenue expectations from new products while building on road maps for existing products.

Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio will present compelling client case study examples showcasing how its advanced product development team is accelerating R&D for leading global innovators to enable faster global market entry, while helping to extend and enhance integration and support capabilities.

Moderator Ed Nair, Editor of Global Services will host a highly interactive Q&A at the end of the presentation.

For additional information and to participate in the webinar please register here.

About Global Services Media
Global Services Media is the media platform for the global outsourcing industry, connecting service buyers and service providers in the global IT services and BPO industry. Its portfolio of media options includes online website, events, newsletters, microsites, online directory (OsourceBook) and custom solutions.

Established in February 2006, Global Services is published by CyberMedia (India) Limited, Asia's largest specialty media and media services company.

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and user experience design services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, PayPal and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

About Zinnov LLC
Founded in 2002, Zinnov – meaning Zeal in Innovation – is a leading management consulting company providing advisory services in the area of Global Sourcing, Emerging Markets Expansion and Human Capital Optimization to Fortune 1000 and reputed SMB companies. Zinnov has been recognized as the top outsourcing advisory firm by IAOP consistently in the last two years. Zinnov works collectively with clients to tackle prevailing organizational challenges by analyzing the changing dynamics, improving performance, and building institutional capability. The services delivered to its clients through advanced reasoning and analytical techniques, provides solutions that help in integrating organizational vision, business definition and processes.

Software product companies need to realign their R&D spend strategy. Even though the R&D spend on software products continues to grow at a relatively lower pace owing to the global economic crisis, the focus on new revenue streams (emerging markets), customer base (SMBs) and delivery models (SaaS etc) continues to increase.

Join Symbio, Zinnov LLC and Global Services on June 11th, 1 pm EST, and attend this webinar to discover how to how to unlock value by globalizing your product development strategy.

Some of the key questions covered:

• How can an ISV release more R&D dollars for new products, keeping the total R&D spend at the same level?
• Specifically, how can small to mid-sized software product companies manage revenue expectations from new products and yet build on roadmaps for existing products?
• What is the role of India and China in helping companies in software R&D? Is there a revenue opportunity?
• How should companies manage products in the later stages of their lifecycle? Emerging models? Their success rate & value addition?

Reserve your seat at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/282718657

Axel Technologies, the company behind the popular mobile TV application Fuugo that we covered for quite a few times in the past, announced that is partnering with Symbio, to accelerate the Fuugo R&D and help the company conquer new markets around the globe.

The official word goes like this (from the press release):

The strategic partnership with Symbio is part of Axel Technologies’ latest investment round with existing investors Nexit Ventures and Finnish Industry Investment Ltd. In addition to new financing, Axel is strengthening its business with a reliable co-creation partner that extends and enhances its R&D, integration and support capabilities. Symbio’s robust mobile, Android and multimedia integration and global technical support expertise frees Axel Technologies to focus on innovative product development and grow the business.

And in case you don’t know, Fuugo’s main strength is that it blends content choices from broadcast TV, mobile TV, Internet videos and social media. It works across various mobile platforms and is apparently super easy to use — I haven’t tried it myself, to be completely honest…

Date: June 8, 2010
Location: Tampere, Finland

Testauspäivän 2010 ohjelman pääteemana ovat (jälleen) kokemukset ketterästä ja mallipohjaisesta testauksesta

Testauspäivän tapahtumapaikkana on Tampereen teknillinen yliopisto,
Korkeakoulunkatu 1,  Tietotalon sali TB103

Kampusalueen kartta/Map of the TUT campus
Ajoreitit Hervantaan/Driving instructions to Hervanta

Tilaisuus on maksuton, mutta ilmoittautumista edellytetään tila- ja ruokailujärjestelyjen takia.

Tervetuloa:  Mika Katara, tilaisuuden isäntä

Hsu will join the “Application Store & Platforms” discussion on Friday, May 28 in a highly interactive panel moderated by Gang Lu, Co-founder of OpenWeb Asia Workgroup and Founder of Mobinode.com and other industry luminaries including:

• Phil Kemp, Vice President, Services, Nokia China
• Michael SONG, CEO, Sky-Mobi
• Anuj Khanna, Founder & CEO, Affle
• Wang Qindai, Chairman & CEO, Datuu
• Wu Chak Man, VP, CFO & General Manager, NetDragon (Shanghai)
• Shen Bin, Vice President, Motorola (China)
• Gene Wuu, Vice President, Borqs

Panelists will address whether the App store model will be successful in Asia, how the market is evolving, the development of new business models and how to enhance partnerships with other players in the ecosystem. According to a May 2010 ABI Research report, last year consumers downloaded some 2.4 billion applications from app stores, and the download rate will accelerate over the next few years until in 2013. Smartphone downloads are expected to peak at just below seven billion.

“We are moving into a new world of digital convergence, with smart connected devices – but where platforms aren’t the focal point they used to be,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “Because of the proliferation of platforms, what matters most is creating the best user experience and working backwards from that – and finding the right platform to deliver that experience.”

The Global Mobile Internet Conference 2010 is designed specifically for entrepreneurs, executives and influencers to understand and capitalize on the growing opportunities in mobile Internet. Around 1,000 industry leaders from Asia, Europe and North America will convene in Beijing to compare and trade best practices across borders, especially between the East and West.

To schedule a press or analyst meeting with Jacob Hsu at Global Mobile Internet Conference 2010 please contact , please contact Ilona Mohacsi at + 1 631.764.3729 or via email at ilona@abelsongroup.com.

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and user experience design services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, PayPal and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

The strategic partnership with Symbio is part of Axel Technologies' latest investment round with existing investors Nexit Ventures and Finnish Industry Investment. In addition to new financing, Axel is strengthening its business with a reliable co-creation partner that extends and enhances its R&D, integration and support capabilities. Symbio's robust mobile, Android and multimedia integration and global technical support expertise frees Axel Technologies to focus on innovative product development and grow the business.

"This is a great opportunity for Axel to accelerate our growth and focus on global plans for Fuugo™. With Symbio's experienced software specialists on board we can deliver new projects quicker and offer the best support to our existing customers," explained Petri Kalske, CEO of Axel Technologies. "Fuugo has already gained a tremendous amount of global interest and with this partnership, we can proceed with our plans for a commercial launch later this year."

"Symbio is very excited to partner with Axel Technologies as we are both passionate about making the digital convergence between communications and technology a reality," said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. "Axel's Fuugo is a perfect example of how converged technology transforms the way we consume media and communicate with social networks. We are delighted to play a strategic co-creative role in enabling Axel to expand its presence globally."

The strategic partnership with Symbio is part of Axel Technologies’ latest investment round with existing investors Nexit Ventures and Finnish Industry Investment Ltd. In addition to new financing, Axel is strengthening its business with a reliable co-creation partner that extends and enhances its R&D, integration and support capabilities. Symbio’s robust mobile, Android and multimedia integration and global technical support expertise frees Axel Technologies to focus on innovative product development and grow the business.

“This is a great opportunity for Axel to accelerate our growth and focus on global plans for Fuugo™. With Symbio’s experienced software specialists on board we can deliver new projects quicker and offer the best support to our existing customers,” explained Petri Kalske, CEO of Axel Technologies. “Fuugo has already gained a tremendous amount of global interest and with this partnership, we can proceed with our plans for a commercial launch later this year.”

“Symbio is very excited to partner with Axel Technologies as we are both passionate about making the digital convergence between communications and technology a reality,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “Axel’s Fuugo is a perfect example of how converged technology transforms the way we consume media and communicate with social networks. We are delighted to play a strategic co-creative role in enabling Axel to expand its presence globally.”

Fuugo™ is the first TV application for personalising a content stream by blending content choices from broadcast TV, mobile TV, Internet videos and social media. Fuugo™ is optimised for a range of mobile and portable devices enabling consumers to enjoy personalised TV content on-the-go. Fuugo™ has been designed with the end-user in mind making it the most user-friendly TV and Video application in the market.

For more information:

Axel Technologies
Petri Kalske, CEO
Tel +358 400 638 880
petri.kalske@axel.fi
www.fuugo.tv
www.axel.fi

Symbio
Ilona Mohacsi
Abelson Group for Symbio
Tel +1 631 764 372
ilona@abelsongroup.com
www.symbio.com

About Axel Technologies
Axel Technologies is the leading mobile TV software vendor and inventor of Fuugo™. Axel offers TV applications for mobile, handheld and portable devices as well as drives the convergence of media consumption via Telefusion. Axel Technologies is headquartered in Finland and has sales support offices in Hong Kong, Taipei, Munich and Santa Clara, US. www.axel.fi, www.fuugo.tv

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and user experience design services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, PayPal and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

According to a recent Automotive Infotainment Systems Market Tracker report by Richard Robinson, principal analyst at iSuppli, as the market recovers from 2010 the desire for connectivity and the explosion in personal entertainment devices will drive the next generation of delivery and broadcast formats in vehicles, creating new opportunities for tier 1/OEM relationships as well as for the silicon and software suppliers that serve this market.

IVI is one of the most challenging fields in the automotive space. It encompasses automotive infotainment products and services including music, news, Internet and multimedia, navigation and location, and telephony. The GENIVI Alliance was formed as a result of the auto industry recognizing that infotainment expectations are set by the major consumer sector players.

Symbio’s advanced software developers and product engineers help meet automotive infotainment development challenges with cutting edge graphics and multimedia integration into vehicle hardware systems for superior consumer experiences. Symbio provides lightweight high performance tool chains to help ensure the quality of the user experience and safety of in-vehicle infotainment systems by enabling User Interface (UI) designers to prototype their UI/HMI (Human Machine Interface) or instrument visual design in an emulator environment. Symbio’s tool chains also provide robust graphics acceleration.

Symbio’s mobile and consumer electronics expertise in software integration and user interface implementation brings added innovation and capabilities to the GENIVI Alliance as the interaction between automotive and consumer is a key factor in competitive product development.

“Symbio’s goals for companies developing IVI equipment and software are in lock step with GENIVI,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “By aligning our services with the open and scalable GENIVI platform, we help accelerate the pace at which new automotive applications can be developed and reduce costs. With Symbio’s IVI services, engineers and designers can focus on critical safety issues and the user friendliness of the system, instead of spending valuable development time on graphics, multimedia integration, optimization and implementation of tools.”

Symbio’s IVI services include:

• Software development
• Software integration
• User interface and user experience implementation
• Software testing and quality assurance
• Technical consultation on the implementation of user interfaces
• Test and measurement systems
• Training on multimedia and graphics technologies and tool chains

The rapidly changing and expanding field within the automotive industry known as IVI is one of the most challenging fields in the automotive space. It encompasses automotive infotainment products and services including music, news, Internet and multimedia, navigation and location, and telephony. The GENIVI Alliance was formed as a result of the auto industry recognizing that infotainment expectations are set by the major consumer sector players.

“Symbio’s goals for companies developing IVI equipment and software are in lock step with GENIVI,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “By aligning our services with the open and scalable GENIVI platform, we help accelerate the pace at which new automotive applications can be developed and reduce costs.

With Symbio’s IVI services, engineers and designers can focus on critical safety issues and the user friendliness of the system, instead of spending valuable development time on graphics, multimedia integration, optimization and implementation of tools.”

Symbio’s IVI services include:

• Software development
• Software integration
• User interface and user experience implementation
• Software testing and quality assurance
• Technical consultation on the implementation of user interfaces
• Test and measurement systems Training on multimedia and graphics technologies and tool chains

According to a recent Automotive Infotainment Systems Market Tracker report by Richard Robinson, principal analyst at iSuppli, the leading market research firm focused on the electronics value chain, as the market recovers from 2010, the desire for connectivity and the explosion in personal entertainment devices will drive the next generation of delivery and broadcast formats in vehicle, creating new opportunities for tier 1/OEM relationships as well as for the silicon and software suppliers that serve this market.

The rapidly changing and expanding field within the automotive industry known as IVI is one of the most challenging fields in the automotive space. It encompasses automotive infotainment products and services including music, news, Internet and multimedia, navigation and location, and telephony. The GENIVI Alliance was formed as a result of the auto industry recognizing that infotainment expectations are set by the major consumer sector players.

Symbio's advanced software developers and product engineers help meet automotive infotainment development challenges with cutting edge graphics and multimedia integration into vehicle hardware systems for superior consumer experiences. Symbio provides lightweight high performance tool chains to help ensure the quality of the user experience and safety of in-vehicle infotainment systems by enabling User Interface (UI) designers to prototype their UI/HMI (Human Machine Interface) or instrument visual design in an emulator environment. Symbio's tool chains also provide robust graphics acceleration.

Symbio's mobile and consumer electronics expertise in software integration and user interface implementation brings added innovation and capabilities to the GENIVI Alliance as the interaction between automotive and consumer is a key factor in competitive product development.

Symbio's goals for companies developing IVI equipment and software are in lock step with GENIVI,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “By aligning our services with the open and scalable GENIVI platform, we help accelerate the pace at which new automotive applications can be developed and reduce costs. With Symbio’s IVI services, engineers and designers can focus on critical safety issues and the user friendliness of the system, instead of spending valuable development time on graphics, multimedia integration, optimization and implementation of tools.”

Symbio’s IVI services include:

• Software development
• Software integration
• User interface and user experience implementation
• Software testing and quality assurance
• Technical consultation on the implementation of user interfaces
• Test and measurement systems
• Training on multimedia and graphics technologies and tool chains

Symbio will be at Telematics Detroit 2010 conference, June 8-9, 2010 at the Rock Financial Showplace, Novi, MI, USA. To arrange a press or analyst meeting with Symbio at Telematics Detroit 2010, please contact Ilona Mohacsi at + 1 631.764.3729 or via email at ilona@abelsongroup.com.

About GENIVI Alliance
GENIVI Alliance is a non-profit industry association whose mission is to drive the broad adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open source development platform. GENIVI will accomplish this by aligning requirements, delivering reference implementations, offering certification programs and fostering a vibrant open source IVI community. GENIVI's work will result in shortened development cycles, quicker time-to-market, and reduced costs for companies developing IVI equipment and software. GENIVI is headquartered in San Ramon, Calif. www.genivi.org.

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software product development and user experience design services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based, enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, PayPal and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

Join Symbio at the Global Mobile Internet Conference 2010, designed specifically for entrepreneurs, executives and influencers to understand and capitalize on the growing opportunities in mobile Internet. Around 1,000 industry leaders from Asia, Europe and North America will convene in Beijing to compare and trade best practices across borders, especially between the East and West.

Symbio CEO Jacob Hsu  will join the “Application Store & Platforms” discussion on May 28th to address the following questions –

• Will the App store model be successful in Asia?
• How is the market evolving?
• How should we encourage the development of new business models?
• How should we enhance the partnership with other players in the ecosystem?

The panel discussion will be moderated by Gang Lu, Co-founder of OpenWeb Asia Workgroup and Founder of Mobinode.com. Other industry luminaries include:

• Phil Kemp, Head of Ovi China, Vice President, Nokia China
• Michael SONG, CEO, Sky-Mobi
• Anuj Khanna, Founder & CEO, Affle
• Qindai Wang, Chairman & CEO, Datuu
• Wu Chak Man, VP, CFO & General Manager, NetDragon (Shanghai)

For more information about the event, please visit: http://www.gmic2010.com/EN_index.html

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Innovation outsourcing can help companies face market shifts and play a pivotal role in globalization software success.

What Globalization Means to Software Companies Today
There are two important areas software companies need to focus on where we see major shifts. The first is the globalization of markets. In the past three decades of software, it has primarily been a US-dominated software market. As such, most software companies built software products for the US, and then localized them for different international markets. But today, markets around the world have gotten much more sophisticated, and there are a lot more choices for buyers in every category of software technology -- whether enterprise software, web applications, or mobile software. The axis of globalization is also starting to shift from being focused primarily on Western markets to Asian markets especially with the rise of China and Korea as maturing markets for global software technologies. Simply taking a US-centric software product and then localizing it for another market just isn't good enough anymore. Increasingly, the largest technology leaders of the world are establishing multiple R&D sites around the world.

A second area of globalization focus has to do with how software products are produced. It used to be US-centric products would be localized to be sold everywhere else in the world. Now you are seeing the rise of locally designed and produced software tailor-made for target markets. An example of this is how Android has been heavily tailored for the China market by China Mobile and other Chinese partners to the point where they have named it the OPhone. The OPhone runs OMS (Open Mobile System), a China Mobile-branded fork of Google's Android for use on China Mobile's proprietary TD-SCDMA 3G network (incidentally, also a homegrown 3G standard). Dell, HTC, and Lenovo already have new phones based on OPhone, and Samsung, LG, ZTE, and Motorola are all expected to support the platform as well. The definite trend going forward is leaving a lot more room in products to accommodate market-specific innovations and customizations.

Benefits of Globalization
Globalization can enhance both the top line and the cost line of your business. There are very few investments that can add to both growth and save on costs the way globalization can. Globalization can be seen from both a market and an engineering perspective. And starting with one generally leads to another. For example, if a company started off establishing an offshore development team in China, they now have a base of product specialists who have some level of expertise in that company's product and value proposition. It becomes quite natural to layer over that offshore development team a smaller team of market and sales specialists that can develop the market potential for China and the rest of Asia from that initial core offshore development team. At least half of our clients are using this strategy quite successfully - starting with offshore development and then evolving that team into market development. The cost savings center starts to generate new sales for you, and you get the bottom-line benefit first, and the top line growth comes after that. It also works the other way around, but the ROI for getting top line growth takes longer than the quick ROI benefit for setting-up an offshore development team.

Innovation Outsourcing without Borders
The nature of product development is changing, and increasingly companies need to tap into the best expertise and the best cost efficiency globally - which is what we mean when we talk about innovation outsourcing without borders. This can very quickly become a complex process for companies to manage. We have products that are being built for our clients across three development centers in three continents, and that's because the expertise to build the best UI (User Interface), and the best applications, and the best system software and hardware design are located in different areas around the world. We are able to provide our clients with globally sourced expertise and cutting-edge innovation, but with a very simple single point of contact around the world. If our client so chooses, they can always work with a local team that takes all the complexity out of "follow-the-sun" product engineering. Here at Symbio, our clients leverage the scalability, cost efficiency, and engineering firepower of global teams across 22 locations around the world, but with the simplicity of working with a local partner who knows their business and the way their company works.

Innovation outsourcing is about working with a partner who can help you build products that are differentiated and win in the marketplace. Companies that can tap into the best domain expertise and technology specialists in the world to design and make enhancements their products, and then implement those designs and enhancements using the most cost-efficient, scalable, and extensible product development processes across the globe are the ones who will succeed in today's market.

The biggest danger in innovation outsourcing is not putting enough effort into the front-end engagement planning process. There are no silver bullets in outsourcing, and success comes from mutual trust and planning.

The short-term measures are... Have we saved money? Has the quality of deliverables gotten better? Have we shipped faster than before? But more strategically, the measurable impact comes over the longer term (1 to 3 years)... Have we been able to produce innovations that are creating new sales in the marketplace. Are the products that we built together with our outsourcing partner differentiated and winning in the markets we sell in?

The Future of Globalization
The pace of change for a technology company is only going to get faster and faster. Product lifecycles are shrinking, and as such, companies are going to need to be even more agile than before. However, by working with the right partners, these companies will be a lot more agile because they won't be locked into the same economies of scale issues as before. In the old days, if you were a Web company, it would be unthinkable to move over and create a mobile phone. But today, that is exactly what is happening, and companies are able to reconfigure and retune their product portfolios and business models quickly by working with a trusted outsourcing partner. I also believe that five years from now, we will see the rise of "engineering-free" software R&D and design houses, just like the rise of fabless semiconductor design houses. When that happens, you are going to see the next golden age of software innovation when any software idea or design can be quickly built and brought to market with just a fraction of the old R&D investment required.

The most successful companies are going to be the ones who can reinvent themselves continually. Successful companies are only limited by their intellectual and creative bandwidth. And with the right innovation outsourcing partner - the world's best technology expertise, greatest engineering scale and cost economies can be realized for a winning strategy.

Jacob Hsu is CEO of Symbio.

What you get:

• The right decision makers present with known investment plans
• Pre-booked 1-to-1 meetings with selected decision makers
• Unlimited opportunities to interact with the delegates
• All arrangements taken care of by our professional team

Meet Symbio's QA expert, Jonas Hinkkanen at this upcoming by-invitation-only executive event. Hear Jonas discuss how technology leaders can obtain reliable measurements on the quality of their software products throughout the entire product life-cycle.

For more information about the event, please visit: http://www.managementevents.com

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Having the right approach to globalization will define successful leadership in 2010. While financial institutions toppled in 2009, new industries were born. While industry incumbents struggled to survive, new entrants thrived. It’s in the sharp corners of when industries and economies turn that new leaders emerge.  Today’s leaders understand the importance of globalization.  Globalization is one of the fundamental laws of business.  If business were physics, then globalization would be its gravity. The best products and services will be sought out, bought, and consumed by people all over the world, especially since comparative product information is now essentially available to anyone, at anytime and anywhere. And successful products and services will be produced globally to be the most optimally cost efficient and with the highest global utility.   Now more than ever before -- the time is right for innovation outsourcing without borders.

Companies need to enable flexibility in their product development processes to accommodate market-specific customizations.  And companies need to get more value out of R&D spending, and tap the best minds on the planet to create tomorrow’s products.  Companies that are truly visionary are able to acknowledge without silos or bias -- that there’s a wealth of talent around the world they can harness.  The industry that continues to push the limit in globalization is of course, the technology industry. Globalization and technology innovation go hand in hand.   One area in particular that is embracing the innovation aspects of globalization is the growing converging technology market.
 
Convergence Here and Now

Convergence has become a mainstream phenomena. Convergence is essentially the merging together of the Information Technology (IT) industry and the Telecom industry. At a more granular level, it’s about the melding together of mobile/embedded devices, web services, and the PC.

The poster child of convergence is the iPhone, and much has been written about Apple’s revolutionary user experience and design. It was also the first mainstream example of a mobile phone where the differentiator was not the phone but the software applications running on the platform.  Apple fundamentally changed the economics and value chain of the telecom industry with the iPhone. Apple essentially took a PC business model and applied it to the telecom industry. Instead of carriers dictating consumer choices for what software and content that ran on their phones, Apple steered the user experience and created a direct channel via iTunes for consumers to get content and software onto their devices. Instead of the phone being the centerpiece of the device, it was now the applications that drove the popularity of the device -- applications being developed all around the world.

The convergence of IT and Telecom isn’t just about industries bleeding into each other. There are many examples of entirely new forms of computing and communications devices that don’t tuck neatly into traditional categories.  Cisco has been making major moves to bring their expertise and dominance in enterprise IT and telecom infrastructure into new markets, notably IP telephony and Web-based communications.  Their Webex and telepresence technologies have become the de facto standard in corporate meetings, but they aren’t easy to categorize as products. Google Voice, Google Wave, and some of the new features in Gmail also defy classic categorization whether they are in the purview of IT or telecom -- their new Nexus One smartphone has completely integrated web services directly into the device. This is just the beginning as mobile devices that provide a seamless user experience across the PC and television through Web services are becoming the de facto standard in computing experiences. Microsoft’s three screens strategy – small, medium, and large – running integrated applications over the cloud is the defining architecture for all future Microsoft products.

Finding a Way to Win: Staying Ahead of the Shift

The forces of globalization and convergence are creating disruptive change in all industries and markets – just look around at the changes the mobile Internet is bringing to the automotive industry, the financial industry with mobile payment options, smart metering and clean/green connected home applications. The winning companies are those, who are able to translate the continuing uncertainty and the breakneck speed of today’s technology into compelling products and services around the globe -- and  tapping into, for example, China’s skilled Android development community or Scandinavia’s multimedia and rich graphic designers.

In the face of increasing technological complexity, expertise has become a scarce resource and forming innovation outsourcing partnerships with trusted and established companies makes sense.  The 21st Century innovator knows to look beyond their four walls to see the world of opportunity ahead.

Jacob Hsu is CEO of Symbio.  Recognized by Chief Executive Magazine as one of the world's Top 12 Young Global Leaders of Tomorrow, and by the World Economic Forum as a 2010 Young Global Leader, Jacob is a graduate of the Wharton School of Business. Symbio provides advanced software engineering and R&D co-creation services to the world's technology innovators, integrating domain expertise, strategic consulting and design engineering talent across mobile, embedded, web and enterprise technologies. www.symbio.com

Join Symbio and National Instruments at NIDays 2010, the largest graphical system design conference in Sweden. Visit the Symbio booth at this free, full-day event, and discuss application examples, projects and new technologies.

This conference is designed to both strengthen your engineering skills and introduce new innovations for a variety of different applications. You can customize your day by selecting sessions from tracks on software development techniques; data acquisition, instrumentation, and test; and real-time control.

NIDays is the event to meet other LabVIEW users and see the latest products in your industry. Visit ni.com/sweden/nidays to discover what NIDays is all about!

To read more about NIDays 2010 and to register for this free one day event, please visit ni.com/sweden/nidays

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Symbio CEO Jacob Hsu will identify and discuss the latest trends in software development and globalization and how Chengdu is ideally positioned to capitalize on these advantages.

Symbio will host co-host an afternoon workshop alongside with Symantec and Wipro, where Ernie Huang, Symbio Vice President, will give a thorough overview and real-world use case examples on how to apply quality assurance and localization solutions to develop quality software.

Meet Jacob, Ernie and the rest of the Symbio team on April 18-20, 2010.

Location: InterContinental Century City Chengdu, 88 Century City Boulevard, Chengdu 610041 China

For more information about the event, please visit: http://www.lisa.org/Overview.1353.0.html

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

According to IDC’s most recent Worldwide Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast, more than a quarter of the world's population, or 1.6 billion people, used the Internet in 2009 on a PC, mobile phone, video-game console, or other device. By 2013, that number is expected to rise to 2.2 billion. China has the most Internet users of any country, with 359 million in 2009. The United States in comparison has 261 million. By 2013, those numbers will increase to 566 million and 280 million, respectively.

"The number of mobile devices with Internet access has simply exploded over the last several years," said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC. "With a wealth of information and services available from almost anywhere, Internet-connected mobile devices are reshaping the way we go about our personal and professional lives. With an explosion in applications for mobile devices underway, the next several years will witness another sea change in the way users interact with the Internet and further blur the lines between personal and professional."

“Mobile Internet access is becoming ubiquitous and China is experiencing phenomenal growth in developing and consuming leading edge mobile services and embedded devices,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “Every year, hundreds of devices flood the market with different browsers, display capabilities, screen sizes and keypads. The variety of devices is growing, consumption is growing and consumers have many choices. Now more than ever, it is increasingly important to understand that successful user experiences are driven by well-designed software. Software that is not designed well or optimized for heightened consumer expectations will lead to expensive false-starts.”

In his session, Hsu will also discuss the latest developments in 3D and HD graphics, multimedia and the increasing importance and benefits of participation in industry consortiums and leading standards bodies as well as open source communities.

At the CMIS Conference exhibit, Symbio will showcase its successful commercial and cutting-edge graphics technology implementation demos featuring:

• Graphics acceleration for embedded and rich User Interface (UI) experiences for touch screen phones, TV UIs and other device display menus
• Vector based graphics working seamlessly with multilingual exotic characters
• An in-house developed, custom and cross-platform graphics engine

To arrange a press or analyst meeting with Symbio at CMIS 2010, please contact Emily Chong at +86 10 8278 4012 or via email at firstname.lastname@symbio.com.

About Symbio
Symbio provides advanced software development and user experience design services to the world’s technology leaders. Symbio specializes in feature-rich software products for companies embracing the digital convergence transformation in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, Web-based , enterprise and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Microsoft and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global software development with local touchpoints in the client’s home market. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

The move is an effort by Google and Intel to extend their dominance of computing to television, an arena where they have little sway. For Sony, which has struggled to retain a pricing and technological advantage in the competitive TV hardware market, the partnership is an effort to get a leg up on competitors.

The partners envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications, like the Twitter social network and the Picasa photo site, as it is to change the channel.

Some existing televisions and set-top boxes offer access to Web content, but the choice of sites is limited. Google intends to open its TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for smartphones, to software developers. The company hopes the move will spur the same outpouring of creativity that consumers have seen in applications for cellphones.

Google is expected to deliver a toolkit to outside programmers within the next couple of months, and products based on the software could appear as soon as this summer.

The three companies have tapped Logitech, which specializes in remote controls and computer speakers, for peripheral devices, including a remote with a tiny keyboard.

The project, which has been under way for several months, was described by people with knowledge of it. They requested anonymity because the partners were not allowed to speak publicly at this point, and details remained under negotiation.

Spokesmen for Google, Intel and Logitech declined to comment. A Sony spokesman said he was not familiar with the project. The companies appear to be hiring for Android-related jobs. Intel, for example, has listed jobs for senior application engineers with Android programming experience who can help extend Intel’s technology “from PC screen to mobile screen and TV screen.” Logitech also has several job listings for Android developers, including a position for an "embedded software engineer" with experience building “audio and video products based on the Android platform.”

Jacob Hsu, chief executive of Symbio, a contract engineering firm that does work for consumer electronics companies, said there was rising interest in set-top box technology among the traditional computing players. “The boxes are just getting more and more powerful, so there’s more you can do with them,” he said.

For Google, the project is a pre-emptive move to get a foothold in the living room as more consumers start exploring ways to bring Web content to their television sets. Google wants to aggressively ensure that its services, in particular its search and advertising systems, play a central role.

“Google wants to be everywhere the Internet is so they can put ads there,” said one of the people with knowledge of the project.

Based on Google’s Android operating system, the TV technology runs on Intel’s Atom chips.

Google has built a prototype set-top box, but the technology may be incorporated directly into TVs or other devices.

The Google TV software will present users with a new interface for TVs that lets them perform Internet functions like search while also pulling down Web programming like YouTube videos or TV shows from Hulu.com. The technology will also allow downloadable Web applications, like games and social networks, to run on the devices.

A person with knowledge of the project said that Google TV would use a version of Google’s Chrome Web browser, which currently does not work on Android phones.

Google’s efforts to break into television advertising date back three years. Through a program called Google TV Ads, the company sells advertising on a handful of satellite and small cable television systems, as well as some cable networks. Google says thousands of advertisers have signed up for the program, but analysts say they believe the amount of revenue generated is too small to have a significant impact on Google’s overall business.

The partners will face a crowded field. In addition to the makers of traditional cable and satellite set-top boxes, Cisco Systems and Motorola, many others have entered the game, including Microsoft, Apple, TiVo and start-up companies like Roku and Boxee, which already stream video from Netflix, MLB.com and other Web sites directly to television sets. Yahoo is also promoting a TV platform that uses small software programs called widgets to use certain Web services.

Anthony Wood, founder and chief executive of Roku, said that a browser-based Google TV box would require an expensive chip and would probably cost $200 or more, compared with a cheaper alternative, like Roku’s $80 device. The device streams content from more than a dozen sites, including Netflix, Blip.TV and Amazon.com. Moreover, “on the TV, people want specific TV apps, not a browser experience,” he said.

For Intel, the effort represents a way to get its line of energy-efficient Atom chips, currently found in laptops, into TVs. Intel executives have talked for a couple of years about creating PC-like TVs, contending that it will take the horsepower of a mainstream chip to play high-definition movies well on bigger screens. Any success with TVs would help Intel get into a new, high-volume market and possibly offset some of the pressure the company now feels from rivals creeping up into computers.

The Google TV software will be open source at its core, meaning that device and TV makers should have broad access to it.

Sony, however, hopes to gain an edge over competitors by bringing out the first appliances and possibly TVs running the software, perhaps under a new brand. The Japanese consumer electronics giant, which owns Sony Pictures, is not expected to put its movie content directly on the devices but will probably have a link to a digital store.

A person with knowledge of the Google TV project said that the set-top box technology was advanced enough that Google had begun a limited test with Dish Network, one of Google’s partners in the TV Ads program. A spokeswoman for Dish Network declined to comment. This month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google and Dish were testing a TV program search service.

Symbio CEO Jacob Hsu will examine the recipe for success in designing intuitive mobile user experiences across devices that inspire fierce subscriber loyalty. Mr. Hsu will discuss the latest developments in 3D and HD graphics, multimedia and the increasing importance and benefits of participation in industry consortiums such as the Khronos Group and other leading standards bodies.

You can meet Jacob and the Symbio team on April 7-8, 2010 at the Symbio exhibit booth.

Location: InterContinental Financial Street Beijing, 11 Financial Street, Xi Cheng Beijing 100034 China

For more information about the event, please visit: http://www.china-mis.com

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

You can meet Petri on Friday, March 12, 2010 at the Khronos Mobile Session - Featuring WebGL
Time: 3:00pm — 4:00pm
Location: Room 123, North Hall, Moscone Center

For more information on the session, please visit:
https://www.cmpevents.com/GD10/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=10555

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Symbio
Serious About Software

Every year, the World Economic Forum recognizes 100-200 of the most exceptional young leaders worldwide as Young Global Leader honorees. The Selection Committee composed of the world’s top media leaders and chaired by Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, selected Hsu after carefully screening the profiles of thousands of leaders from every region of the world across many disciplines and sectors.

Hsu’s nomination is in recognition of his professional accomplishments, his commitment to society and his potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world through his inspiring leadership. Hsu has been instrumental in helping thousands in China attain a better life through education, helping design and develop a web-based solution that connects students with affordable student loans, organizing global training programs and by providing his own personal support. An active speaker at conferences around the world, Hsu is a thought leader in global technology innovation, and is passionate about encouraging people to develop not only their technical skills but also their individual skills such as global citizenry, problem solving, and effective leadership behaviors.

Hsu joins this year’s honorees including Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Product and User Experience, Google, Inc., Evan Williams, Co-Founder and CEO, Twitter and Steven Chen, Co-Founder and CTO, YouTube, Inc. Hsu and the other Young Global Leaders are invited to convene at biannual summits, and other Forum events and meetings, to collaborate on initiatives to tackle some of the toughest and most challenging issues of our generation.

"Being a part of the World Economic Forum YGL program is an incredible opportunity to partner and collaborate on ways to help change the world for the better,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “Symbio’s growing international presence and dedication to pioneering the innovation outsourcing industry means we are committed to tapping the brightest minds in the world and developing true co-creation partnerships with the companies we serve to deliver local touch and global reach. Symbio is dedicated to co-creating the best products that make a difference in the marketplace, and ensuring education opportunities in our communities and participating in corporate social responsibility initiatives through the World Economic Forum and our other programs."

“Jacob’s key strength is his visionary and creative approach to problems that inspires global team members to achieve amazing results whether for clients or for helping empower those less fortunate through education,” said David Lee, Symbio Chairman of the Board. “We expect Jacob and Symbio to continue to be recognized for leveraging their extraordinary and global technical design excellence, development expertise, knowledge, and resources to help advance society.”

About Symbio
Symbio designs and develops feature-rich software products for companies embracing transformational advances in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in mobile, embedded, enterprise, Web-based and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Microsoft and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective technology outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global reach with local touch. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

About The Forum of Young Global Leaders
Established in 2004 by Professor Klaus Schwab, The Forum of Young Global Leaders (www.younggloballeaders.org) is a unique, multistakeholder community of the world’s most extraordinary young leaders who dedicate a part of their time to jointly address global challenges and who are committed to devote part of their knowledge and energy to collectively work towards a better future. Together the Young Global Leaders work to discover innovative solutions to today’s most pressing problems through various initiatives and workstreams as well as catalysing the next generation of leaders.

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Incorporated as a foundation in 1971 and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is impartial and not-for-profit; it is tied to no political, partisan or national interests (http://www.weforum.org).

Symbio has collaborated with Entre Marketing, an event marketing and trade fair specialist, to design and develop Entre Exhibitor, a converged mobile and Web Green Stand software application that helps the events industry to save millions in paper costs while drastically reducing its carbon footprint. Symbio also announced it has expanded its mobile, embedded and Web practice areas to offer industry leading companies green design and development expertise. All of Symbio’s rich graphic design, multimedia User Interfaces development and software stack performance optimization are designed with low energy consumption in mind.

An average trade show attendee takes home up to 10 pounds of paper, and a typical expo generates waste paper an equivalent of 170 trees. In a bid to develop a strategic solution to deliver efficiencies to this market, Symbio assisted Entre Marketing to co-create Entre Exhibitor, an eco-friendly, easy-to-use cross-platform software application that avoids wastage waste and provides reliable information to attendees, exhibitors and event organizers alike.

The Entre Exhibitor’s highly advanced Green Stand software application, built on the Brieftec platform, is downloaded to the mobile devices of exhibitors and visitors and a software client communicates with a Web solution.

Brieftec is mobile solution provider for various information management processes. This allows exhibitors can easily manage their client interface, generate leads, digitally share contact information and marketing material with likely customers and view reliable data on visitor behavior. The application is designed to support virtually every mobile phone. Visitors can in no time easily get the product information they are interested in by snapping pictures of 2D tagged collateral and even share it with their colleagues. Now with Entre Exhibitor, event organizers can finally offer and brand a truly green exhibition and collect reliable data on exhibitor as well as visitor behavior.

Clean/Green Mobile App Rescues Carbon Stamp of Events
The average trade show attendee takes home up to ten pounds of paper, and the typical expo generates the equivalent of 170 trees in waste paper. In the effort to develop a strategic solution to deliver efficiencies to this market, Symbio helped Entre Marketing to co-create Entre Exhibitor, an eco-friendly, easy-to-use cross-platform software application that eliminates waste and provides reliable information to attendees, exhibitors and event organizers alike.

“By helping over 1000 clients design and implement services for 300 international trade fairs in 25 countries, we have seen massive amounts of marketing collateral waste and great inefficiencies in information exchange,” said Harri Kaasinen, CEO, Entre Marketing. “We turned to Symbio’s mobile and embedded experts to design and develop an elegant solution to this problem. They worked with us onsite and leveraged their global experts to deliver a completely integrated offering that we are now selling to event organizers."

“We are delighted to help Entre Marketing design a mobile green application that virtually eliminates the need and cost of paper at business events, while increasing the efficiency of information exchange,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “Our deep domain expertise in converging technologies and unique end-to-end skill set in bridging mobile, Web and server software, helped deliver this innovative solution.”

How it works
The Entre Exhibitor cutting-edge “Green Stand” software application, built on the Brieftec platform, is downloaded to the mobile devices of exhibitors and visitors and a software client communicates with a web solution. Exhibitors get to easily manage their client interface, generate leads, digitally share contact information and marketing material with potential customers and view reliable data on visitor behavior. Designed to support virtually every mobile phone, visitors can in seconds effortlessly gather the product information they’re interested in by snapping pictures of 2D tagged collateral and even share it with colleagues back at the office. With Entre Exhibitor, event organizers can finally offer and brand a truly “Green Exhibition” and gather reliable data on exhibitor and visitor behavior. For more information please visit: http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/exhibition/environment.htm.

To schedule a media or analyst briefing at Mobile World Congress or for further inquiries, please contact Jennifer Abelson at (917) 445-4454, or via e-mail at jennifer@abelsongroup.com.

About Symbio
Symbio designs and develops feature-rich products for companies embracing transformational advances in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in enterprise, embedded, mobile, Web-based and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Microsoft and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost effective IT outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global reach with local touch. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

About Brieftec
Brieftec is an award winning mobile solution provider for various information management processes. Brieftec’s solutions provide tools for mobile phone users to optimize their information gathering and storing abilities within the service industry, the event and exhibition industry as well as the interactive education industry. Known for its customer-oriented software solutions, Brieftec, whose head office is in Oulu, Finland is focused on contextually aware information management solutions. For more information about Brieftec, visit www.brieftec.com.

About Entre - Thoughtfully Measured Encounters Entre Marketing Ltd's operations focus on the design, building and implementation trade fairs, exhibitions and event marketing activities. Services are available to both individual companies and business clusters around the world. Entre is a market leader in Finland serving in 32 countries. Entre Exhibitor is vital part of Entre’s success story in facilitating Finnish companies brand, visibility, knowledge and business contacts in international markets. You will find more on Entre at www.entre.fi.

The interactive panel discussion will focus on innovative ways mobile operators can use outsourcing and shared services to reduce operating expenditures and increase their commercial focus.

Joining Symbio’s CEO Jacob Hsu are:

• Jeff McElfresh, VP, Product Development & Operations, Emerging Devices, AT&T
• Valter D'Avino, Head of Managed Services, Ericsson
• Ashwini Bakshi, Head, Global Managed Services, NSN
• Steve Elfman, President, Network Operations & Wholesale, Sprint
• Chris Parsons, Chief Marketing Officer, Vesta

The panelists will discuss which assets should be retained, shared or outsourced and provide real world use case examples of successful global partnerships in which operators have controlled cost savings, better enabled service quality and reduced risk.

In addition to presenting at Mobile World Congress, Symbio will showcase its mobile and embedded product engineering expertise in rich graphics and intuitive multimedia user interfaces with demonstrations of its latest design and development projects for clients. At Symbio’s Pavilion located on Central Avenue, AV60, visitors can see a stunning, interactive 3D Virtual TableTop User Interface using Symbio’s OpenGL ES 2.0 engine implementation. Visitors can also experience an innovative “Green Stand” converged mobile to web software application and learn about the Blitrix software–based 2D accelerator for embedded User Interfaces utilizing the ARM Neon CPU.

To schedule a media or analyst briefing at Mobile World Congress or for further inquiries, please contact Jennifer Abelson at (917) 445-4454, or via e-mail at jennifer@abelsongroup.com.

About Symbio
Symbio designs and develops feature-rich products for companies embracing transformational advances in communications and technology. By leveraging its deep expertise in enterprise, embedded, mobile, Web-based and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Microsoft and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost effective IT outsourcing. With global headquarters in Beijing, China, San Jose, USA, and Tampere, Finland, Symbio is the outsourced product development partner companies trust to deliver truly integrated global reach with local touch. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

Key Points

• Testing is needed in order to prevent application outages and unexpected downtime.
• Direct replication of hardware and software is too costly for an SME, but virtualization can create testing benefits without significant expenditure.
• Having a consultant on call can be helpful for getting advice from experts who understand application design and installation issues.

When implementing new programs and system changes, many small to midsized enterprises understand the need for creating some type of test environment so they keep a “live” system out of danger in case of glitches. Although there are some instances where a direct replication of hardware and software can be overly costly, there are still ways to develop a network of test servers, staging servers, and production servers.

Seeing The Need

One of the most important aspects about a test server setup to understand is the necessity of such a system.

“Unfortunately, most SMEs think that setting up test and stage environments is too complex and costly for them to have in place in their corporate infrastructure,” says Dylan O’Connor, CTO of Staples Network Services by Thrive (www.thrivenetworks.com). “What most SMEs fail to realize is that by not addressing the need to test and stage releases of their software applications in a methodical manner, they expose their IT infrastructure to greater risks.”

Those risks include unexpected downtime or application outages, he notes, which can happen when a release is taken straight into the production environment without proper testing. O’Connor believes that most SMEs should think about their current IT infrastructure with an eye on replicating the infrastructure in a way that mimics production as closely as possible but also keeps their budgetary constraints in clear focus.

Using Virtualization

Direct replication on a one-for-one basis in both a stage and test environment shouldn’t really be considered for an SME, notes O’Connor, because the costs are just too prohibitive.

Also, that type of setup requires that a significant amount of manual configuration work must be done to keep the environments in sync, adds Tomi Kankaanpää, chief technologist at Symbio (www.symbio.com).

But an approach that leans on virtual infrastructure to replicate the majority of the infrastructure can be done on a very budget-friendly level.

“Eighty to 90% of the issues caused by new code or application release can be tested completely virtually at less than 20% of the cost of replicating the entire production infrastructure,” he says. “Given that most SMEs are doing little to no prerelease testing, getting that amount of testing capability out of that low [of] an investment is a simple and cost-effective approach to application release staging.”

Although the initial capital expenditure might seem daunting at first glance, O’Connor notes, the long-term cost savings achieved by leveraging the approach can more than pay for the initial investment. By using a virtual infrastructure, one single server can run many virtual server instances on one piece of equipment.

Also factored in is the ability to save templates of common server images—for example, an SQL server, a Linux Web server, and a server running Windows 2008—and this can create a solution that allows for test and staging environments to be set up on the fly, which may be necessary for instances in which new applications have to be installed quickly.

A virtualized test environment can be deployed multiple times, and different testing activities can be carried out in parallel. Another benefit is that such an environment is more transferable, so it can be utilized with outsourcing partners.

The same virtualized environment can be deployed in different hardware configurations and scaled according to the phases of the project, Kankaanpää says. Time and money are saved by maintaining the core server environment virtualization image instead of multiple physical environments, and the benefits can be even greater if the virtualization and hosting services are used for deployment.

Key points to consider when setting up this type of environment are performance, security, and reliability requirements, Kankaanpää notes. He says, “The best approach to determine whether to go for a full-blown environment is to perform combined ROI and risk analysis for different alternatives—such as virtualized vs. real environment—and make the determination based on the results of this analysis.”

Bringing In Help

Even with a strong test server environment, it can be helpful to bring in experts when a rollout or upgrade is major, says Shane O’Donnell, vice president of engineering for BlueStripe Software (www.bluestripe.com).

“In the cases where customers have problems moving apps from test servers and into production, the common theme is that they have tried to substitute someone who understands the application’s design with someone who can simply install the software,” O’Donnell says.

In general, test server setups require more planning than just getting the app up and running, he adds. Instead, test environments need to work hard to anticipate how a server-application combination will relate to the greater whole of data center resources.

Symbio, which has U.S. headquarters in San Jose, did not disclose terms of the deal.

Helsinki, Finland-based Cubical Solutions is a software engineering service company for the telecommunications, financial services and manufacturing industries.

Symbio said the acquisition adds expertise in "critical domain areas that enable rapid technology convergence between IT and telecom."

In October, Symbio announced plans to merge with two Scandinavian technology companies under the Symbio name.

Adding Linux Expertise, Traction with Global Leading Clients
With over 15 years of software engineering expertise, Cubical delivers service excellence to global industry giants including Fujitsu Services, Nokia Siemens Networks, and EADS. The acquisition of Cubical adds significant expertise for Symbio in Linux and open source product development, leveraging operating environments like Red Hat, SuSE, Maemo, Wind River Linux and OpenEmbedded Linux. This agreement further extends Symbio’s deep domain expertise across mobile, Web, enterprise and embedded technologies, underscoring its commitment to delivering tomorrow’s technology today for world leading innovators.

"In continued efforts to differentiate Symbio as the leader in converging enterprise technologies, while meeting business demand for deeper domain expertise, we acquired Cubical for its success and engineering talent in Linux and open source product development,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio. “With this acquisition, Symbio furthers its strategy of delivering ‘innovation outsourcing’ across all converging platforms, technologies, languages and geographies, and strengthens its proficiency across all Linux-based operating environments."

Symbio Growth Plans
Symbio continues its multi-pronged approach for growth: scaling up operations in Asia, Europe and the US, investing in high-level global engineering expertise, and broadening its expertise across converging technologies to deliver the most strategic and economical enterprise user experiences for global businesses.

About Symbio
Symbio is a leading innovator of product co-creation solutions worldwide. By leveraging its deep domain expertise in enterprise, embedded, mobile, Web-based and user experience driven technologies, Symbio enables its clients to focus on their core competencies while building mission-critical technologies and products to sustain, speed and secure the long-term success for the business. World-leading companies like China Mobile, IBM, Microsoft and Nokia already rely on Symbio for faster, innovative, and highly cost-effective product engineering. With 22 locations across the US, Europe and Asia, Symbio provides worldwide integration services with a unique local touch. For more information about Symbio, visit www.symbio.com.

中国服务外包网：信必优作为一家知名的跨国服务外包企业，近年来的发展情况如何？请大概介绍一下成长速度和业绩表现。

徐嘉：作 为一家私营公司，我们不方便透露市场份额的数字，但是我可以说我们是市场上最大和增长速度最快的产品开发外包公司之一。正如分析师预测的，在产品开发外包 市场增长的方式，要么是合并，要么是内生增长。我们将继续通过这两种途径实现增长，并且评估所有的发展方式，以保持我们在全球不断增长的客户群中所拥有的 竞争优势和价值。

我们的客户包括中国移动，IBM，微软和诺基亚。

最近我们和Flander以及Ardites宣布战略合并，Flander在移动和嵌入式领域拥有强大的实力，Ardites是用户体验科技方面的专家。而信必优在商用软件和互联网领域拥有多年的经验和长期的客户资源。

此 次合并缔造了产品开发外包市场的下一代融合专家，该领域一直由全球最具先见的公司所驱策，这些公司一直致力于跨技术、跨行业及跨地区的技术创新，并以此来 满足企业需求。我们为客户提供他们所需的-全方位的领域专长、高端设计和用户体验创新以及最高成本收益的产品-满足客户无论何时何地的需求。

我们目前在全球22个办公室拥有1400多名工程和技术人员，覆盖移动，网络和嵌入式等领域。

中国服务外包网：信必优在美国、芬兰、中国都设有全球总部，三个总部之间是什么关系，这种机构布局的思路是什么？未来的重心会是在哪里？

徐嘉：信必优在全球22个地区有办公室，其中在中国北京，美国硅谷和芬兰坦佩雷有3个全球总部，在瑞典和芬兰有7个研发中心，在中国和孟加拉有5个离岸开发中心。

信必优得到了国际企业客户的长期认可和信任，现在，信必优是全球领先的产品开发外包企业。

信必优帮助客户聚焦核心业务，开发核心产品。利用在本地和离岸的交付能力，我们提供从软件设计到维护支持的全周期服务。

中国服务外包网：在本次与Flander、Ardites的合并中，信必优在技术、市场、人才等方面都会得到加强，比较来看，哪方面最为成功？能否具体介绍一下，三家企业各自在本次并购合作中的主要价值体现？

徐嘉：此次合并，为信必优在全球扩张奠定了基础。

Flander 和Ardites在移动和嵌入式领域以及用户体验科技方面拥有强大的实力，而信必优在商用软件和互联网领域拥有多年的经验和长期的客户资源，合并后，我们 能为客户提供整合的产品开发解决方案。当前，技术融合已是大势所趋，而信必优则定位在跨技术，跨行业和跨地域的技术开发。信必优的成本，人力资源，地区分 布，设施和创新优势将使我们能够提供更出色的服务。

中国服务外包网：能否介绍一下信必优在全球发展的战略设想。

徐嘉：信 必优致力于服务客户，培养员工，我们持续审视我们的策略，以满足客户的需求。而我们的优势在于我们的员工。我们在企业架构，网络，移动和嵌入式领域拥有深 厚的技术积累。同时，我们全球的交付网络，使我们能够为客户提供多种服务模式，满足他们的业务需求。在人力资源，业务广度和知识产权保护方面，我们拥有独 特的优势。

中国服务外包网：信必优如何看待中国服务外包的本土市场？在中国市场的目标客户是如何定位的，核心竞争能力如何体现？如何做到提供切合中国本土企业实际需求、文化习惯的服务？

徐嘉：就像国外的公司想进入中国市场一样，中国本地的市场对我们也有巨大的吸引力。

今天，中国已经超越美国和印度，成为全球研发投入最高的国家，中国正在发展成为世界的创新中心，这里拥有大量的创新性的人力资源。

根据Accenture 2008年的一份报告，24家财富500强公司是中国公司，同时将有更多的中国企业将出现在榜单上。中国公司今天面临的问题，是如何在国际的市场取得增长。
北京是信必优在亚洲的总部，我们的交付网络遍布在欧洲和美国，我们致力于为全球客户提供高附加值和经济高效的产品开发外包服务。

The listing is based on revenue growth over a consecutive five year period.

In the 2008 survey, Ardites ranked 34 with 239 %  and Flander 45 with 126 % growth in revenues over the past five years . 

Deloitte Finland has been listing the fastest growing technology companies in Finland since 1995. Flander, founded in 1997, has been on Technology Fast 50/500 list since 2002 and the Ardites, founded in 2003, since 2008.

　　一年多以前，软件外包企业文思创新正式登陆美国纽约证券交易所，发行价8.5美元，融资6502.5万美元。文思创新的成功上市，在当时被看做是中国软件外包业欣欣向荣的一个信号。时隔一年多，国际金融危机席卷全球，中国的软件外包企业站在了风口浪尖上。外包企业并购收购、做大做强也成为今年外界关注的焦点。而在9月23日，信必优集团和移动及嵌入式软件开发商Flander、Ardites，共同宣布三家公司合并建立新的信必优公司，该公司致力于满足全球领先企业对融合的技术解决方案、丰富多样的用户体验、高质量的策略和设计以及经济高效的产品开发外包等方面的需要。三家看起来业务并不是很相关的公司，缘何走到了一起？在企业融合后，原有的业务又将如何发展？新公司又会有着怎样的新战略？

　　与移动嵌入式厂商融合的新商机

　　在谈到为什么有此次收购的时候，信必优公司的首席执行官徐嘉说的最多的一个词是“融合”。“市场和技术正加速融合，使各行业重新定义游戏规则，同时也在创造新的商业机会。在全球范围内向客户提供创新、专业以及经济高效的解决方案，是三家企业此次合并成立新的信必优公司的动力。”徐嘉表示，“在现今的商业领域，我们的合并不仅仅是人力上的优化，它实现了跨技术、跨地区及跨行业的扩展，并且带来整合的技术和解决方案——对于需要资源来满足开发和技术整合需求的大型企业来说，合并实现了各方共赢。我们期待为全球企业客户，在企业所在地、所在国乃至全球范围内提供全面和创新的解决方案。”而提出融合概念的软件外包企业不止信必优一家，东软2006年与2007年的解决方案论坛都是以融合作为主题。

但是为什么此次信必优选择与移动及嵌入式领域的厂商进行融合？徐嘉并没有正面回答，他只是谈道：“Flander和Ardites的优势是在移动和嵌入技术领域的设计，而信必优拥有多年积累的值得客户信赖的全球交付能力、商业应用的创新能力以及网络开发经验。经过合并，我们建立了可以满足客户需求的研发中心。”

　　而看重移动嵌入式市场的似乎不止信必优一家。无独有偶，在此前，东软与芬兰公司SESCAGroupOy签订股份购买协议，收购其拥有的从事高端智能手机软件开发业务的三家子公司的100%股份。缘何在此时，大家都开始进军移动嵌入式领域呢？

　　3G牌照发放后，中国市场成为各智能手机厂商的必争之地。与此同时，运营商也成为各大厂商的关注重点。赛迪顾问的报告显示，在市场规模方面，全 球及中国的手机市场将在未来3~5年内持续保持两位数的增长，中国依然是全球规模最大、增速最快的手机市场。到2011年，全球手机市场规模预计将增长到 2000亿美元。在市场格局方面，品牌集中度不断提升，手机市场利润不断下降，手机更新换代速度不断加快。因此迫使各个手机厂商降低手机的研发成本、缩短 研发周期，特别是在手机软件的研发方面，从欧美、日本向与中国和印度合作转移的趋势愈发明显，这也将在未来3年内给包括信必优在内的中国软件外包服务提供商带来机会。目前，中国移动和诺基亚均是信必优的客户。在此之前，东软也用了一年半的时间，让它的电信事业部完成了从2G到3G的业务升级。9月份在南海召开的中国服务外包论坛上，前中国驻美国大使馆参赞李武强也表示：“嵌入式是中国软件外包企业寻求突破的一个关键点。”

        融合后的新业务和新战略

　　在采访中，记者问道：“三家公司采用何种方式进行合并，管理团队和业务以谁为主体？”对此，徐嘉表示，此次交易平等合作，但不愿意透露具体的股 权处理方式。在整合后，新的信必优集团将结合原来三家公司的业务特点，进行业务的调整，合并之后的公司将拥有新的业务组合，包括移动和嵌入式领域、互联 网、企业架构与软件开发、质量保证、测试和全球化、测试和检测评估系统，服务包括产品设计、全球化和本地化、测试和检测评估系统、卓越中心和技术支持。

　　谈到公司的管理团队，徐嘉表示，未来将进一步加强人才队伍的建设，并进一步增强公司跨地区的创新能力，他将致力于战略、策划及业务全球发展，公司的总裁MarkusSuomi将负责公司的运营。

　　合并后，企业文化的融合也成为关注的重点。对于这点，一直做外包业务、强调与国外客户文化和思维融合的信必优来说，也不是一个难题。嵌入式软件具有的工业标准化较差、与客户的紧密程度高的特点，使得除了对技术及经验有特定要求外，在合作过程中的模式与融合也至关重要。所以，对于想在移动嵌入式领域分得一杯羹的信必优来说，融合是并不可少的。

　　此外，信必优总裁MarkusSuomi表示：“合并使得我们在规模、资源及技术专长方面，可以满足产品开发外包日益增长的需要，通过对整个产 品生命周期的管理，我们能为那些寻求优秀人才、独特策略、行业专长，以及丰富用户体验和高效节约等优势的客户提供真正的全球产品开发外包环境。信必优致力 于引领全球融合的产品开发外包，提升在美洲、欧洲及亚洲市场上的境内和离岸服务的扩展能力，这些区域是我们客户最集中的地区。”

　　徐嘉也表示：“信必优的文化是全球化的、开放的、整合而且灵活的。我们的目标是在质量，客户满意度和可靠性上获得客户信任，为他们提供更加灵 活、更优质更快捷的服务，而这与Ardites、Flander的目标是一致的。未来，我们会紧密地整合我们的员工，以独特的、团结的文化帮助客户。”

　　并购实现中国软件外包的全球化

　　中国的软件外包在顺应全球化的趋势下，正在步入一个高速成长的时期，同时，整个行业的结构也在调整，未来，中国的软件外包将涌现一批有实力的企业。中国的服务外包将逐渐摆脱依靠低成本获取客户的模式，转而依靠技术创新为客户提供更有价值的服务。“中国从一个劳动力低成本的输出国逐渐转变成一个高科技，创新力和工程技术输出的源地。”徐嘉说道。

　　不仅仅是技术的创新，中国的软件外 包也正在走向全球化。以信必优为例，通过此次收购，信必优的客户，可以借助他们离岸和近岸服务的专业技能，解决产品开发的关键性问题，并在美洲、欧洲及亚 洲等地区规避地域政治风险。这既确保了项目的机密性和基础设施管理的可靠性，又使维护、支持以及质量保证等工作顺利开展，从而帮助企业优化其本地和全球供 应链策略，实现价值最大化。

　　印度外包公司之所以发展得如此之快，并购是极其重要的手段。例如，印度塔塔咨询公司在2004年收购了澳大利亚FNS公司以完善其银行和金融服 务外包的产品线；2006年收购了位于瑞士和法国的TKSTeknosoft公司以进一步增强金融服务能力，同时加快进军欧洲市场；2008年10月，又 以5.05亿美元收购了美国花旗集团在印度的外包业务。

　　现在，印度的配套设施、政治的稳定性和人才成本已经成为制约印度外包行业发展的瓶颈，欧美地区出于政治的考虑也不可能把所有的外包订单都给印度，而通过并购进行全球化和国家化的战略布局是中国企业超越印度企业的必由之路。

　　各大咨询机构对软件外包发展的观点

　　近期麦肯锡在商业科技方面的一项报告预计，全球离岸商业和技术服务的市场规模将从目前的每年800亿美元增长到2020年约5000亿美元。虽然届时市场将有超过6倍的增长，但那时整个行业也只挖掘了不到三分之一的潜在市场。麦肯锡预测在2020年潜在市场规模将达到约1.65万亿到1.8万亿美元。

　　根据联合国2008年12月的一份报告，中国在2007年已经超越美国和印度成为全球第一的研究开发的大国。这份报告指出，中国大概有1000个研究开发中心，大部分都面向高科技领域。

　　印度研究公司Zinnov认为中国有920个跨国公司的研究开发中心，而印度只有671个。同时，普华永道和杜克大学联合发布了一篇报告指出，中国正在从印度手中蚕食更多的软件开发订单。印度在全球软件和 产品开发外包领域的份额一直在下降，2002年之前，印度占68%，在2002～2004年间，印度占55%,而在2005～2007年间，份额降到了 50%。未来5年，印度的市场份额预计要下降到40%。与此形成鲜明对比的是，中国所占的市场份额从2002年之前的1%，到2005～2007年，已经 增长到9%，因为很多的软件和产品开发在此期间跟随制造业进入中国。印度的行业巨头例如Infosys、Wipro、TCS面临来自中国对手的强劲挑战。

　　IDC公司外包及离岸服务副总裁DavidTapper认为，在离岸IT服务市场角逐的企业，在过去的5～10年取得了巨大成功，目前也面临着 前所未有的经济冲击以及不断变化的客户需求。客户需求的日益变化推动整个行业产生重大变革，从而促使企业采取新的策略以保持短期和长期的增长。IDC相 信，这些企业成功的秘诀不仅在于它们聚焦核心业务领域的实力，还有它们提供全面服务的能力，而这正是通过其强大的本地资源（成熟市场）以及对外包/管理服 务的重视实现的。这其中，服务的范畴越来越多地体现在实用性的服务形式上。

Symbion asiakkaat hyötyvät uuden yhtiön paikallisuudesta Euroopan, USA:n ja Aasian markkinoilla 22 paikkakunnalla. Koska projekteja voidaan hoitaa joustavasti usealla eri aikavyöhykkeellä, mahdollistuu niiden kustannusrakenteen optimointi. Symbiolla on useita tuotekehitysyksiköitä Suomessa, Ruotsissa ja USA:ssa, sekä off-shore yksiköt Kiinassa, Taiwanissa ja Bangladeshissa. Alueelliset pääkonttorit sijaitsevat Tampereella, San Josessa ja Pekingissä.

”Tämän fuusion ansiosta meillä on ainutlaatuinen kokonaisuus kapasiteettia, resursseja ja osaamista, jolla täyttää kasvava kysyntä ulkoistetulle ohjelmistokehitykselle,” sanoo Markus Suomi, Flanderin toimitusjohtaja.” Symbiolla on hyvä asema edelläkävijäksi ohjelmistopalveluissa asiakkaittemme tärkeimmillä markkinoilla – USA:ssa, Euroopassa ja Aasiassa. ”

”Tarjoamme maailmanlaajuisesti innovaatioita, osaamista ja kustannustehokasta toteutusta,” perustelee Jacob Hsu, Symbio Groupin toimitusjohtaja yhdistymistä.  ”Valmiutemme ja osaamisemme eri teknologioissa sekä tuotteiden ja palvelujen parhaan mahdollisen käyttökokemuksen toteuttaminen ja varmistaminen yli maantieteellisten ja toimialarajojen lisääntyy huomattavasti yhdistymisen myötä,”sanoo Jacob Hsu.

Arditeksen toimitusjohtajan Janne Räsäsen mukaan ”Symbiossa yhdistyy kolmen oman alansa edelläkävijän vahvuudet ja mobiili-, internet-, sovelluskehitys-, sulautettujen järjestelmien ja laadunvarmistuksen huippuosaaminen. Pystymme vastaamaan kokonaisvaltaisesti asiakkaittemme tarpeisiin kehittää tuotteita ja palveluita käyttäjälähtöisesti aina matalan tason ohjelmistointegroinnista, tuotteiden ja palvelujen kehittämiseen, laadunvarmistukseen ja ylläpitoon."

Asiakkaat kuten esimerkiksi Nokia, Vaisala, China Mobile, IBM ja Microsoft luottavat Symbion osaamiseen huipputeknologian kehittäjänä. Symbio työllistää jatkossa yli 1 400 alansa ammattilaista ja yrityksen yhteenlaskettu liikevaihto vuonna 2008 oli yli 50 miljoonaa euroa.

"San Jose will be the hub for all of our senior executives and U.S. projects," said Jake Hsu, CEO of the newly formed Symbio.

Hsu was also CEO of Beijing-based Symbio Group, an outsourced product development provider that is merging with Flander, a mobile and embedded software development company, and Ardites, an expert in user experience technologies.

Financial terms of the merger were not disclosed, but Hsu described the all-stock transaction as a "merger among equals" despite retaining him as CEO and using a variation on the Symbio name. The new company is being described as one of the five largest in the $3 billion outsourced product development space.

Worldwide, the company will have 1,400 employees. Symbio Group already had about 10 people working in a San Jose office, and the new Symbio will hire about 25 people in the near term and expand its operations to include an innovation center where clients can go to do project planning and visioning.

"We will continue to add talented sales consultants, solution architects, and program managers as we look to build out a high-caliber client solution center where our clients can come in for innovation workshops with our architects and product designers," Hsu said. "As we integrate more closely with our U.S.-based clients, we will scale our near-shore technical and program management teams, and we will also have a small lab as well for those highly confidential projects that cannot be moved offshore."

Symbio's client list reads like a "Who's Who" of technology giants, and includes IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Nokia. Symbio Group, which was formed in 1994 by a group of IBM engineers, also works closely with PayPal Inc. as an outsource partner in China; PayPal localization quality manager Catherine Dove said the merger will help PayPal make a greater impact in Scandinavia.

"They have huge technical capabilities, and they're able to perform as if they were PayPal employees, and it's amazing how much expertise they have in Beijing," Dove said. "The merger is going to help us a lot, because we¹re going to need more resources in Scandinavia and now we're going to be able to go in country using local resources."

John McCarthy, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, said that for Symbio, the merger is a play to build out the company's particular expertise in the hot telecommunications arena.

"I think this economic downturn will do to offshore product development what the last downturn did for offshoring of IT," McCarthy said. "This could be the first in a series of acquisitions in the product development space."

Hsu said the merger also will help the companies scale across technologies, geographies and industries.

"It's a win-win for large enterprises that don't have the resources to support full-time development that convergence demands," Hsu said.

At-a-glance

Headquarters: San Jose
CEO: Jake Hsu
Founded: 2009
Employees: 1,400
Web: www.symbio.com
Phone: 408-694-9601