October 30, 2007, Updated September 13, 2012

Voltaire’s Asaf Somekh: We identified a problem that needed a solution and identified a business model.Grid backbone solutions company, Voltaire has been named the fastest-growing technology company in the 2007 Fast 50 company rankings held annually by international consultancy and accounting firm Deloitte Brightman Almagor.

The publicly-traded company, which is based in Herzliya, makes server and storage software for data networks. It took first place in the awards after increasing its sales by 50,612 percent over a five-year period. Between 2002 to 2006, its annual sales surged from just $60,000 to $30 million.

Voltaire was founded in April 1997, and began life developing a 2in1 PC, a data security device that divided a PC into two different workstations, one public and unsecured, the other private and secured. Despite early market interest, by 2000, the company was in serious financial trouble and decided to shift course into its present field.

“The award is recognition for all the hard work we have been doing over the last few years,” Asaf Somekh, VP of strategic alliances at Voltaire, told ISRAEL21c. “We identified a problem that needed a solution and identified a business model. We have worked hard to get OEM contracts with IBM, HP, and SUN, and that’s how we managed to scale the business. The award is mathematics. It’s revenue growth and it shows our strategy was the right one.”

This is the first year the 160 employee company has been included in the competition, but Somekh said he hoped it would not be the last.

Second place in the Fast 50 went to seven-year-old cellular content services developer Celltick Technologies, which develops and markets software to increase average revenue per cellular user. The privately owned company offers a silent application that transmits content to a cell phone’s screen saver that can be used to send content and advertisements to millions of telephone screens. Celltick systems are already deployed by more than 20 mobile operators.

In third place for the second year in a row came semiconductor firm Runcom Technologies, which develops chips for WiMAX communications over cellular networks, with five-year growth close to that of Celltick.

Next in line came Red Bend Software, which develops solutions for mobile phone and network operators to speed up the adoption of new services and features with growth of 14,347 percent, followed by Wintegra (last year’s Fast 50 winner), Mobixell Networks, BioView, Modelity Technologies, Alma Lasers, and Actimize.

While software companies set the pace for Israel’s fastest growing high tech companies, communications and networking firms are emerging fast. Twenty-six of the 50 companies chosen this year, made the top 50 in previous years, displaying long term growth.

The Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards, which rate the 50 fastest-growing technology firms, began in Silicon Valley in 1995 and have become a symbol of success in the US. This is the eighth year the awards were held in Israel. In the competition 250 private and public firms are judged on the basis of revenues over the previous five years.

In Israel, the average growth rates of the winning companies were more than twice those of the top 50 last year – some 3,336 percent, compared with 1,610 percent. The top 10 companies in this year’s list saw growth of 14,163 percent, compared to 6,413 percent last year.

This year’s event was held in Tel Aviv. Winning companies will go on to compete in the EMEA Fast 500 competition, which identifies the 500 fastest-growing companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.


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