2005-07-19
Thales has Entered into a Company Wide Site License to Use Birdstep RDM Embedded in Thales and Magellan-branded PC-based Applications
SEATTLE/OSLO - July 20, 2005 --
Birdstep Technology (OSE: BIRD) today announced that Thales' navigation business has entered into a company wide site license for RDM Embedded 7.1 to embed the product within the Company's Thales and Magellan-branded PC-based applications. RDM Embedded 7.1 became Thales' database of choice because of its ability to reduce code to less than 100K with compression, without sacrificing performance, making RDM Embedded the premium database for resource constrained GPS devices.
Thales chose Birdstep's RDM Embedded database not only for its performance, and the ability to reduce the code to less than 100K with compression, but RDM Embedded 7.1 provides easy cross-platform portability. Thales currently targets the WinCE platform, with future plans to expand support to other platforms.
”To develop an embedded mapping engine we were looking for a database that has a small code footprint but allowed rich functionality and high processing efficiency in handling semantic information. We were also looking for a product that would provide us with a set of PC tools to prepare and analyze the data. RDM Embedded fit the bill,” explained Dr. Anatole Lokshin, Vice President of Data Products and Technology for Thales' navigation business. “Birdstep offered an extremely solid code base, a rich set of functionality in a footprint under 100K, an efficient and convenient set of PC tools and a professional services team that was able to specially customize the product to provide us the flexibility we required – this made Birdstep an easy selection for our mapping products.”
RDM Embedded is currently used in the Magellan line of MapSend software solutions, which contain highly detailed maps that can be easily downloaded from your PC to your handheld GPS receiver. Map details include streets, lakes, rivers, coastlines, parks, hunting and fishing, railways and points of interest.
About Birdstep Technology
Birdstep Technology is traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE) under ticker 'BIRD'. The company has headquarters in Oslo and Seattle in addition to offices in London, Boston and San Francisco. Birdstep's small footprint, high performance database technologies combined with its wireless roaming and access software enables companies to build innovative solutions for embedded systems and the Mobile Internet. Birdstep makes your information accessible anytime, anywhere, on any device and on any infrastructure. Birdstep's global customers include 3Com (COMS), VERITAS (VRTS), Harman Becker Automotive Systems, HP (HPQ), Accenture (ACN), Telenor (TELN), PCTel (PCTI), Connect One and the National Stock Exchange of India. For more information, visit www.birdstep.com
Contact Information:
Laura Klebs
(206) 748-5353
lklebs@birdstep.com