SINGAPORE , 20th May 2008 – A self-funded, home-grown startup upstaged global competition to win the second Global Itanium Solutions Award 2008 and cash prize of US$ 50,000.
Established in 2002, the company made several attempts to attract funding from the local government agencies. Cash strapped, the management of the company found creative ways to fund the research and development of their core product- Financial Portfolio Builder.
“I was fortunate to have some initial fee-paying customers who were willing to try our products. When one door shuts, the other door opens— unlike most of the startups, I didn’t manage to secure any seed capital but I had good R&D partners, like Intel, HP and Microsoft who supported me by providing me with high-end servers, benchmarking and testing platforms, and go-to-market support. These equipment are very expensive, especially for a startup and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars”, said Kumaran Pillai, CEO of Protégésoft.
Pillai attributes his success to the ability of his management team to identify niche markets, building strong alliances and partners, and a sustainable business model.
“Microsoft and Protégésoft’s solution offers financial institutions a strong competitive advantage in many ways. This includes growth in business opportunities, building customer loyalty and boosting retention to create customer intimacy and developing further trading, up- and cross-sell opportunities. Microsoft has worked closely with Protegesoft to ensure that our enterprise platform technologies such as MS Windows Server 2008 and MS SQL Server work seamlessly with Protégésoft’s solution and together, provide our customers with a solid and secure foundation to climb new levels of scalability, robustness, and efficiency,” said Ryan Tan, Banking Industry Manager, Asia of Microsoft Corporation about their partnership.
“We are very glad to see our Elite ISV partner, Protégésoft, winning the Innovation contest by selecting HP Integrity Servers on Itanium®-based platforms as their preferred developmental platform," said Freddy Tan, Vice President and General Manager, Commercial Accounts, Solution Partners and Alliances, Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific Japan. "We have been supporting Protégésoft in its development, sales and marketing efforts in the Asia Pacific region. We are proud to be able to support Protégésoft's efforts to harness the scalability, robustness, and efficiency of HP Integrity Servers to achieve the quantum leap in performance of their application to provide better business outcomes for our customers in the financial services industry.”
The company plans to develop its technology further to include Financial Visualization tools to cater to the demands of the Banking and Financial Services Industry of Asia. Protégésoft is the first company in Asia to win the award for the Enterprise category beating top IT firms from around the globe. The Asian software giant Infosys received an Honorable Mention for the ISA Award 2007, Enterprise Category.
For more information about the Innovation Award or the winning organizations, visit http://www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org/
