In order to promote Russian technology business in the United States and to give growing Russian technology companies better visibility on the US market, in the year of 2004 AmBAR has established its Annual Award to the "Most Promising Russian/FSU Software Company".
This award has been created to recognize a software company whose innovations demonstrate potential for growth and leadership in the global marketplace. Companies eligible for the award are privately-held small and medium size Russian/FSU software companies as well as US companies that have research and development in Russia.
Nominees are reviewed in terms of the originality of the software products, existing revenue, growth projections, reputation of the executive teams, market potential, technological competitive advantage, intellectual property portfolio, and other factors.
In 2004 AmBAR recognized A4Vision, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based biometrics solutions company with a product
development office in Moscow, Russia, as the winner of its First Annual Golden Lock Award to "The Most Promising Russian Software Company, 2004."
The second AmBAR Award will be announced at the SVOD conference in November 2005.
Jury
- David Ai - Hitachi Corporate Venture, Vice President, Catalyst Division
- Gary Benton - Coudert Brothers LLP, Partner
- Esther Dyson - EDventure Holdings, Founder
- Skip Glass - Canaan Partners, Partner
- Frances Karamouzis - Gartner Group, Research Director
- Peter Loukianoff - Alloy Ventures, Partner
- Alexander Miroshnichenko - Veritas Software, Sr. Director, Advanced Technology Group
- Rajeev Motwani - Dot Edu Ventures, Founder, Stanford University, Professor of Computer Science
- Mark Sanor - Ernst & Young, Partner
AmBAR Award 2004
The Winner: A4Vision [1]
Top 5 Companies:
A4Vision [2] - identification systems and solutions using 3D face recognition technology
ABBYY [3] - document recognition, forms processing and linguistic technologies
JetBrains [4] - provider of smart tools and applications for software development
SeeStorm [5] - synthetic video communications provider
Speereo [6] - provider of voice recognition solutions for handheld devices