In October Giza concluded a seed-stage investment in XtremIO, a startup developing Solid State Drive (SSD) data storage systems. XtremIO’s solutions are designed to deliver ultra-high performance in Enterprise storage environments, while addressing existing storage device limitations and data network connectivity challenges.

Giza led the investment with by JVP. In addition to leading the investment round, Giza helped recruit Ehud Rokach as one of XtremIO’s founders and its CEO. Rokach formerly served as CEO of Corrigent Systems.

XtremIO intends to tackle the problem of data storage system performance, a major bottleneck to modern data centers. The Company’s enterprise solutions will enable shared storage environments with substantial performance improvements, efficient utilization of IT resources, and a low capital investment.

Alongside Rokach, the company’s founders include Yaron Segev, Shachar Frank, Prof. Shuki Bruck and Aryeh Mergi. The founding team has vast experience in the high-tech industry including a variety of technological fields, entrepreneurship and building technological companies from the concept stage up to companies that became category leaders.

XtremeIO becomes the sixth company in the Giza V portfolio, and the Fund’s fifth investment in 2009.

In October, ActionBase announced that it has doubled its channel partners in less than eight months to include resellers in all continents, and it is actively recruiting new partners to support the company’s worldwide expansion. ActionBase helps organizations manage unstructured and dynamic critical business processes such as audit and compliance, governance, change management and more.

ActionBase’s channel growth reflects the growing demand from enterprises to save costs and reduce operational expenses by effectively streamlining organizational processes and easily tracking actions taken in course of human-oriented processes. New partners in Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, Singapore and South AfricaAfrica were added to execute sales and provide implementation and support services to customers in Europe, APAC, North America and Africa.

In October, Altair announced that its mobile WiMAX baseband processor, the FourGee-2150, has been integrated into MiTAC’s Mio branded Mobile Internet Navigation Device (MIND). The device – called MiBuddy – was announced and demonstrated at the WiMAX Forum’s Broadband Taiwan 2009 event in Taipei.

With over $13B in global sales, MiTAC International is a global information technology company headquartered in Taiwan and publicly listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. It develops and produces navigation devices and IT solutions for users around the world.

MiTAC’s announcement came as part of its “Explore Taiwan” project, which will provide WiMAX wireless broadband services to citizens and travelers. The project will enable rich and real-time Location Based Services (LBS), including mobile navigation for walking, driving and public transportation as well as city tour guides where users can record what they see and find local events of interest and friends in the area.

“Altair’s FourGee-2150 is the most power efficient WiMAX chipset in the market today and we see it as a crucial element of the new MiBuddy system,” said Billion Wan, Associate Vice President, of MiTAC. “In the coming months, as we roll out additional devices and services we look forward to leveraging the unique power efficiency and small size of Altair’s products for other devices which will follow MiBuddy.”

Odysii has signed a contract with 7-Eleven convenience stores in Thailand to install Odysii's Match N' Go solution in 5,000 7-Elevens in Thailand this year. The project is already underway, with installations in 200 7-Elevens throughout Thailand, 50 of them in the South East Asian country's capital, Bangkok.

Odysii's Match N' Go solution is an intuitive, value-driven marketing application that allows retailers and restaurants to drive up-sell and cross-sell opportunities at the most critical juncture in the buying process: the point of purchase. This is achieved by using customer-facing screens to present customers with highly enticing visual images of store products which complement the items they have already ordered.

In October, Flash Networks announced the availability of its next-generation Harmony Video Optimization. Harmony is a policy-based solution that enables improved data optimization for increased operational efficiency for operators, and advanced video streaming shaping for improved user experience. Based on Flash’s video solution already successfully deployed in Orange Romania, the new video optimization solution is designed to help mobile and converged operators efficiently manage the growing amount of video content available over the mobile Internet.

“With the growing adoption of video-enabled devices and increasing popularity of video content, the amount of traffic traveling over mobile operators’ networks is skyrocketing,” said Peter Jarich, Research Director at Current Analysis. “To deal with this dramatic change in consumption, operators will need to improve their network efficiency while ensuring a smooth and enjoyable video experience for all users, in order to reap the most benefit, both in terms of revenues and customer loyalty.”

The Harmony Video Optimization solution enables operators to optimize video traffic based on various parameters including date and time, network congestion, and subscriber information. Due to highly efficient transcoders and a unique system architecture, Harmony Video Optimization has a low footprint, resulting in a solution that is up to five times more cost-effective than other solutions.

“To cope with the growing amount of mobile video traffic, operators are seeking solutions which will squeeze the most out of existing capacity,” said Merav Bahat, Vice President of Marketing at Flash Networks. “With our new, policy-based video optimization solution, we can offer operators the flexibility to provide smooth, high-quality video, while ensuring maximal cost-effectiveness.”

Flash Networks’ Video Optimization solution is part of the Harmony Mobile Internet Services Gateway which enables operators to enhance user quality of experience, reduce operational expenses, and manage and monetize access to the open Internet by applying best-in-class services to mobile data traffic.