Press Releases

1st foreign company to win The Enterprise Challenge Award

Singapore Police Force will license and use software from CastBridge Inc. which allows users to share data across different computers in real time

Singapore, October 30, 2003, — The Prime Minister's Office of Singapore announced today that US based company CastBridge Inc. has won The Enterprise Challenge (TEC) Award. CastBridge, which provides real-time data networking and application software targeted at non-technical users, will license their software to the Singapore Police Force (SPF) under the "Delivering Real Time Operational Information in SPF" trial. This will allow the SPF to easily share desktop and enterprise data for operations such as nationwide crime statistics collection, system patch management, and police officer training and objectives planning.

In a signing ceremony at noon today at the Global Entrepolis trade show (Exhibition Hall 601, 6th level of the Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exposition Center), Mr. Bilahari Kausikan, Second Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and co-chair of the TEC panel, will sign a memorandum of understanding with Mr. Khoo Boon Hui, Commissioner of the Singapore Police Force, which has agreed to license and use the CastBridge software suite. The Singapore Police Force and Mr. Kumar Thiagarajan, founder of CastBridge, will also sign a contract to license the CastBridge software.

TEC was started to encourage more collaborations and exchange of ideas between the private and public sector as no organisation will ever have the monopoly of good ideas. "Each innovation sponsored by TEC is test-bedded in the public agency that can best reap the potential of the innovation. TEC plays the role of 'matchmaker', sourcing for prospective public agencies that can best benefit from the private sector innovation. The partnerships combine the respective strengths of both the private company and the public agency to create commercially viable products." said Mr. B. Kausikan Second Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and co-chair of the TEC panel. "Foreign companies sponsored by TEC have to incorporate in Singapore and further the development of the innovation here. Their presence is a plus for Singapore."

The SPF also sees itself as a dynamic organisation, always open to new ideas and solutions. Said Mr. Khoo Boon Hui, Commissioner of the Singapore Police Force "Innovation is valued in SPF - we have put in place an organisation framework to promote innovation at all levels. SPF has been working closely with TEC Office since The Enterprise Challenge was first introduced on 1 Mar 2000. We are always open to new ideas and ready to provide test beds for innovation. We were thus excited when TEC office approached us with this new project, which, if successful, has the potential to help organisations such as the SPF share complex real-time data internally and with multiple agencies in a strategic and secure manner and enhance the decision making process, which is especially important in areas of significant emergency planning and co-ordination."

"We are pleased to be recognized by the TEC and the Singapore government and thank them for this award," says Mr. Kumar Thiagarajan, founder of CastBridge. "Two years ago CastBridge had a simple, but powerful vision to provide a way for non-IT users to easily share any information in real-time, including desktop data, using the tools and skills they already use. We realized that there is a lot of really important, but not necessarily mission critical data, mostly locked in desktop computers or non-enterprise repositories that today is nearly impossible or prohibitively expensive to share. The result of our vision is the solution we are deploying today with the Singapore Police Force. We expect this to be the first of several applications within the Singapore government."

During the ceremony, Mr. Thiagarajan will describe and demonstrate the CastBridge solution followed by a question and answer session. The CastBridge solution is being demonstrated all week in the TEC booth (number 6F05-05) during Global Entrepolis @ Singapore.

About TEC
The Enterprise Challenge (TEC) is a new $10m Fund set up to provide funds and sponsorship for innovative proposals that have the potential to create new value or significant improvements to the delivery of public service. TEC provides sponsorship of funds and test beds for such innovations that needs to be trial tested so that its feasibility and practicality can be proven. The purpose of TEC is to encourage creativity, innovation and enterprise among our people, to spark, develop and fund initiatives that can create new value for the Public Service and fundamentally improve the delivery of public service. Besides providing trial funds, TEC will also identify and nurture some very promising innovative ideas to their fullest potential by providing facilitation resources, and funds for experimentation or trial testing. This new injected dynamism would inevitably spread to other sectors of the society, lending to a more vibrant and enterprising Singapore.

© 2004 CastBridge, Inc.