SUNDBYBERG, Sweden , July 3, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Swedish company Intertex Data has been announced winner of the European IST Prize, a prize sponsored by Euro-Case that goes to innovative European product development projects. Intertex has received the prize for the IX66, a broadband router/firewall with a built-in SIP server.
The Euro-Case selection criteria are: technical excellence, innovative content, potential market value and capacity to generate new jobs. The jury picked 20 winners among more than 400 competing companies from 28 different countries. The winners are invited to exhibit their products at the IST 2003 event in Milan in October. The culmination of this competition will be the selection of three Grand Prize Winners among the 20 winners, where each Grand Prize Winner will receive Euro 200,000.
Intertex receives this prize for the development of the IX66 product, which is a firewall, ADSL-modem and router with support for the SIP protocol. SIP, Session Initiation Protocol, is an Internet standard for person-to-person communication like telephony and video conferencing. SIP is also used for instant messaging (chat), presence, voice and video between users with Internet broadband connection.
Intertex has solved the problem of SIP communication not passing the firewalls/NATs/routers that are installed between the public Internet and private LANs. The architecture chosen by Intertex is the most general one, integrating a SIP-proxy and a SIP-registrar, dynamically controlling the firewall. Through this architecture, the IX66 has also become a complete SIP server, which is very useful for IP telephony, for example. Intertex started developing this product in early 1998 and the first version of the product was released in early 2002.
In the near future all firewalls will be required to be SIP capable so that users on a LAN will be able to benefit from person to person communication over the Internet. This problem has so far been largely ignored, resulting in an enormous potential for these kind of products.
"We are very proud to be winners of this prize and are pleased that the revolution person-to-person communication over the Internet will bring about is getting attention," said Karl Erik Stahl, CEO and founder of Intertex. "We are rapidly approaching the next evolution in Internet usage after e-mail and web surfing -- with voice, video, presence and instant messaging directly between the users representing the new wave of applications. It is now high time to prepare the local networks for this change as ordinary firewalls simply cannot handle this type of communication!"
The European Information Society Technology Prize is organized by Euro-CASE with the support and sponsorship of the Information Society Programme of the European Commission. For more information, please refer to http://www.ist-prize.org/.
About Intertex Data AB
Intertex Data AB was founded in Sweden in 1982 by current CEO Karl Erik Stahl. The company develops and markets communication and security products. Currently, the next generation broadband access products focusing on the SIP standard and person-to-person IP communication are being introduced by Intertex. The products include featured ADSL modems and firewalls prepared for IP Telephony, Presence, Instant Messaging, Video Conferencing and Home Appliance Control. Intertex has won several International awards for creative product design as well as business excellence.
For more information please contact Martin Feuk, Vice President, Intertex Data AB, martin.feuk@intertex.se, +46 8-628 28 28. Press information is available at www.intertexdata.com/press In North American please contact Howard Kendall, howard.kendall@intertex.se, +1 (603) 465-3961.