On May 5-6, Giza held its annual LP Meeting in Israel. This year’s event was held in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, and was attended by Giza’s investors from the US, Europe, Asia and Israel.

The choice of Jerusalem as the site of the annual meeting offered LPs the opportunity to experience Israel’s unique mix of the past and the future, with thousands of years of history comingling with cutting-edge technology.


The LP Meeting kicked off on the afternoon of May 5th with a tour of Jerusalem’s historic Old City. The tour made its way through the Armenian and Jewish Quarters of the Old City, and culminated in a trip through the Western Wall tunnels. The tour allowed participants to understand the historic and geographic development of the city from Biblical times to the present.

The first day then concluded with a gala dinner that allowed Giza’s investors to mingle with the Giza team and a number of CEOs from Giza’s portfolio companies in a relaxed and pleasant setting.

The main event was the LP meeting itself which was held on May 6th. Investors received an update on the Giza IV and V funds, including a discussion of Giza’s relatively new activities in the Cleantech space, as well as a report of Giza’s activities in Asia.

Following the presentation by the Giza Managing Directors, LPs were afforded the opportunity to hear updates from four Giza portfolio companies:

• Amir Peleg (pictured right), CEO of TaKaDu, discussed his company’s pioneering efforts in the space of water utility monitoring management.
• Navotek CEO Giora Kornblau discussed Navotek’s innovative approach to improved tracking and navigation solutions for.
• Avichay Nissenbaum, Chairman of WinBuyer, demonstrated how WinBuyer’s advanced Onsite Comparative Pricing solution increases revenue for online retailers.
• Altair CTO Yigal Bitran presented the company’s progress in the LTE space.
	After the updates and lunch, Giza was honored to present Nir Barkat (pictured left), the Mayor of Jerusalem. Barkat, formerly a successful high-tech entrepreneur and investor, outlined his vision for the city and his plans to turn Jerusalem into a popular destination for business conferences and a destination for value-added outsourcing. Following a meeting of the Advisory Committee, the participants were treated to a special preview tour of the Israel Museum, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. Giza plans to hold its next LP meeting in April 2011 in New York. More pictures from the event are available here.

TaKaDu CEO Amir Peleg says that the speed of customer adoption for TaKaDu’s solution as well as the enthusiasm for the company’s offering has been much greater than the company expected. Existing customers have reported savings not just in the area of water loss, but also energy savings. TaKaDu can reduce energy costs by alerting water utilities to unnecessarily high pumping levels and other incidents.


TaKaDu recently expanded its sales and business development team. Herv? Bourgeois has been appointed VP Worldwide Sales and Limor Bakal has been named VP Channels and Business Partnerships. Both Bourgeoisie and BK are experienced veterans of CheckPoint Software.

TaKaDu develops water network management software, providing water utilities with a water loss reduction solution and network monitoring that detects, classifies and locates multiple types of network anomalies, with focus on leakage events.

TechCrunch Disrupt Winner



Soluto took home first place in the high-profile startup competition held as part of the Tech Crunch Disrupt conference held in New York in May. Organized by the influential technology blog Tech Crunch, the Disrupt conference gathered together highly innovative startups with disruptive technology as well as business leaders from some of the largest companies in high-tech.

Soluto beat out 19 other startups to take first place, and won on the strength of the Company’s offering as well as its solid business model.
Soluto develops “anti-frustration software” whose goal is to solve common problems that plague PC users: long boots, slow performance, and system crashes. The company utilizes a “PC Genome” technology that maps out processes in the PC operating system and allows users to selectively turn off or delay processes while learning from the collective experience of users.

The Company reports that it has seen a huge interest in its beta offering, as well as thousands of new users since winning the Disrupt event.

In the midst of a difficult holiday shopping season, WinBuyer provided welcome news for online retailers. WinBuyer recently concluded its study of the 2009 holiday shopping season, which showed that online retailers who implemented WinBuyer’s Onsite Comparative Pricing (OCP) application experienced increases in conversions and average order value as well as a 5%+ lift in total website revenue.

WinBuyer’s OCP application has been implemented on hundreds of e-commerce sites including Overstock.com, Ritz Interactive, and GameQuest Direct.


“In testing, we’ve seen a significant jump in conversions for products with Onsite Comparison Pricing enabled,” says Rob Levy, the CEO of online retailer Electric Shopping. “2009 has been a tough year for retailers and customers alike, but by adding Onsite Comparison Pricing to our conversion toolset, electricshopping.com has seen a larger than expected revenue lift in the 4th quarter.”

Levy continues, “As much as we all focus on providing a fantastic experience and great customer service, when purchasing a commoditized product, customers will price compare. Onsite Comparison Pricing keeps the customer engaged right there, on our site, building trust and proving to them that when we say ‘price promise’ we mean it.”

For more details from WinBuyer’s study, please click here

ActionBase recently announced a joint solution with ClusterSeven to manage, monitor and control the risks associated with daily processes managed by using e-mail and spreadsheets. ClusterSeven is a leading provider of spreadsheet management solutions.
The combined offering provides an added layer of management and control on top of familiar Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Microsoft Outlook environments to help enable risk management, compliance and business efficiencies for organizations, financial institutions and financial reporting divisions for Fortune 500 companies.

Working with ClusterSeven allows ActionBase to expand and enhance its own offering, creating a solution that helps organizations with all levels of reporting, from individual status reports through corporate-level reporting for trends and compliance.
In addition, ActionBase was named a finalist in the 2010 StrategicRISK Awards. The Awards are sponsored by StrategicRISK magazine, the leading publication aimed at people who deal with risk at a strategic level and are responsible for corporate governance. ActionBase’s ActionBase’s Audit.Tracker, was named as a finalist for the in the Risk Management Product of the Year category.
“ActionBase has been chosen as a finalist because of an innovative product that provides control over audit and compliance management,” said Sue Copeman, editor of StrategicRISK.

After registering its first major design win with motherboard maker MSI, Lucid is poised to join forces with Asus as well. Asus’s upcoming Crosshair IV Extreme motherboard will integrate Lucid’s Hydra chip.

Lucid’s Hydra chips effectively enable gamers to combine the graphical power of any two or three graphics cards, regardless of the model and even the GPU manufacturer. Three modes are available – the A mode for a combination of ATI GPUs, the N mode for Nvidia GPUs and the X mode that combines the power of ATI and Nvidia chips.

Asus hopes to release the Crosshair IV Extreme towards the end of Q3 2010.

In the meantime, MSI, which has incorporated Lucid’s Hydra chip in its Big Bang motherboards has received a wave of positive feedback from both its users and the technology media. Lucid’s Hydra technology recently helped MSI take home the Best Choice Award in the IC & Components category at the COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2010 exhibition for its Big Bang-Fuzion board.

In May, Odysii was awarded the Deal of the Year award at the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Southeast Region’s (AICC), 9th annual Eagle Star Awards Gala.

Odysii received the award based on its partnership with Georgia-based Documentor, a provider of Point-of-Sale systems for the Quick Service Restaurant industry. As part of the partnership, Odysii integrated its Match ‘N’ Go solution into Documentor’s POS offering.

The Odysii Match ‘N' Go solution analyzes the items in a customer’s order and identifies the best up-sell offer for that particular customer. Based on rules predefined in the Odysii system, Match ‘N' Go performs real-time analysis and delivers to the screen an attractive offer for a complementary item that matches the original offer.

In awarding Odysii the Deal of the Year, the AICC noted that, “Adding Odysii’s capabilities supports Documentor’s ongoing effort to meet the needs of its customers. The ability to increase average ticket while the customer is placing his order is extremely valuable to any franchisee and HQ. This additional value was the driving force for Documentor’s decision to engage in a strategic partnership with Odysii to provide solutions for Arby’s, KFC, and others.”

The American-Israel Chamber of Commerce is a bi-national business association with the mission of increasing economic development by fostering understanding, cooperation, and business relationships between Israel and the Southeast

In May, Viewfinity was named a finalist in the 7th Annual MITX Technology Awards. Sponsored by the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX), one of the premier Internet business and marketing associations in the US, the MITX Technology Awards recognize emergent and innovative technologies developed in the New England area.

Viewfinity was recognized for its cost-effective approach to systems and privilege management for laptops, desktops and servers. The Viewfinity solution provides capabilities that focus on reducing the cost and time related to IT operations and support by providing the most flexible, secure and manageable environment for in-house and mobile workforces.

“Being named a finalist in the MITX Technology Awards is an important achievement,” said Kiki Mills, president of MITX. “This recognition translates into increased exposure with media, industry analysts and investors, and provides them a higher profile in their industry. We congratulate all of the finalists on their achievement and wish them luck in the competition.”

Flash Networks recently announced enhancements to its Harmony Web & Media Optimization solution which will enable operators to offer better and quicker mobile browsing for iPad users.

The new enhancements will support HTML5, the standard used by iPad for the delivery of rich media content. This enhanced solution from Harmony optimizes video delivered through the HTML5 framework in order to offer better and quicker mobile browsing for iPad users. At the same time, it performs data reduction to enable operators to economically manage the huge raise in data traffic.

Merav Bahat, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Flash Networks, said, "The introduction of iPads will significantly increase the already tremendous volume of data traffic that has been generated by the iPhone and other Internet-centric mobile devices. As the mobile Internet continues to grow and evolve data optimization solutions are essential to ensure that subscribers don't become frustrated by network congestion and, at the same time, enable operators to effectively manage growing traffic requirements."

Flash Networks helps the operators to improve quality of experience, reduce network operational expenses, and manage and monitor the mobile Internet. As a result, it gives a faster, secure, and more personalized experience for its customers. The new Web & Media Optimization solution from Harmony helps the operators to optimize their video traffic.

Harmony Web & Media Optimization possess a low footprint because of highly efficient transcoders and matchless system architecture. As a result, the solution generated is up to five times more economical than other solutions.

At the Annual NAB show held in Las Vegas in April, SURF announced the launch of TranSurf, its DSP-based video transcoding acceleration blade. Designed to meet the rapidly escalating market demand for delivery of high quality video from multiple sources to multiple devices, TranSURF is a DSP-based system, enabling optimal video-stream density. TranSURF accelerates multimedia transcoding through the implementation of an innovative software/hardware solution for both live and on-demand content.

The need for high-density transcoding has exploded in recent years, as can be seen from the growing matrix of content sources, target-screens, and different bit-rates. Many systems already require simultaneous, real-time transcoding of hundreds and thousands of high-resolution video streams. Current solutions cannot be sufficiently scaled-up to deal with high capacity transcoding needs, making a DSP-based solution a must.

“The ability to transcode hundreds of high-resolution video streams in real-time, with a single blade, offers a huge advantage to video service and content providers,” Avi Fisher, CTO and co-founder of SURF, explained. “With the explosion of video traffic, we recognized the need for a high density solution that could be simply and quickly integrated into our customers’ systems.”

TranSURF not only boosts transcoding capabilities, but also provides enrichment tools for content monetization including text overlay, picture-in-picture and logo insertion.