Information Technology GroupAn IT Design and Project Management Company |
|
 |
Information Technology Group is a
small-business IT Design House and Project Management Company located in
Bucharest, Romania, specialized in electronic and software
engineering projects. The company is 100% Romanian, and was
legally registered as "Information Technology Group, srl." in 1998.
All the startup funding was provided by AST-Israel in 1998, and during the period 1998 @:@ 2000 Information Technology Group had an exclusivity contract with AST. As of January 1st 2001, Information Technology Group becomes an independent IT project management company, operating its own software- and electronic design house.
The most valuable company asset today consists of its market-proven project management and design methodologies portfolio, based on its strategies for assembling and operating world-class engineering teams that are adapted to a given project. The constant focus on the quality-of-service allowed the company to incrementally build a credible track record on the international market, such that Information Technology Group's customer portfolio today includes multi-million dollar companies located in hi-tech countries like Israel, UK, USA, and a world-class billion-dollar company headquartered in California, USA. @strip
R&D Partnerships
IT Group is actively seeking R&D partnerships in the IT sector. Most
of the company's previous collaborations were based on IT Group's own
ideas and have been governed by a negotiated version of the IT
Group NDA; however, IT Group is also open to collaborations based
on its potential partners' ideas and projects.
An archived version of the IT Group NDA is available for download here.
We currently use a Synopsys synthesis-compliant subset of the VHDL-93 standard as the hardware description language of choice for digital circuit designs, and we test our designs on Xilinx's freeware cross-platform WebPack IDE, a fully-featured VHDL/Verilog simulator based on the industry-standard ModelSim engine. This workflow, together with some other design techniques, allows us to produce portable designs that have a predictable performance when ported from one technology library to another.
For the design of analog circuits and mixed-signal frontends we use both the open source GNU Octave suite and custom-built tools, and we verify all of our analog designs with RTI Microwave's freeware SANA circuit simulator and/or the Qucs open source simulator.
Previous electronic designs covered various areas, including low power and high power RF with complex analog filter designs (the IT Group founders were the first independent collective in Romania to design and build a fully standards-compliant digital synthesis FM transmitter, targeting the then-untapped post-communist East-European FM radio stations market of the early '90s), programmable and non-programmable digital equipment (e.g. microprocessors, digital signal processors, network processors, security processors, etc).
Our current h/w portfolio includes internally designed, proven-in-silicon microprocessors, high performance DSP and Encryption cores, and discrete audio and RF circuits.
In order to allow for maximum portability of our applications, we currently use standard C++ with STL as the main programming language, and the open source Qt SDK for cross-platform OS integration; similarly, we develop our database modules with a strong focus on standards compatibility by targeting the well-established open source PostgreSQL and SQLite DBMS implementations, and we design our web clients for strict-mode HTML5 / JavaScript / CSS3 compliance. This software design strategy allows trivial porting of our software packages to any of the major desktop and server operating systems (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and MacOS) with virtually no modifications and only minimal OS-dependent configuration files (the cumulated OS-specific configuration files for a software project are typically less than a page of source code).
Starting early 2012, we currently author our documentation in OpenDocument HybridPDF format, thus making it readable in any modern PDF reader and editable with a modern LibreOffice suite.
All the startup funding was provided by AST-Israel in 1998, and during the period 1998 @:@ 2000 Information Technology Group had an exclusivity contract with AST. As of January 1st 2001, Information Technology Group becomes an independent IT project management company, operating its own software- and electronic design house.
The most valuable company asset today consists of its market-proven project management and design methodologies portfolio, based on its strategies for assembling and operating world-class engineering teams that are adapted to a given project. The constant focus on the quality-of-service allowed the company to incrementally build a credible track record on the international market, such that Information Technology Group's customer portfolio today includes multi-million dollar companies located in hi-tech countries like Israel, UK, USA, and a world-class billion-dollar company headquartered in California, USA. @strip
Statutory change
On September 22nd 2008, Information Technology Group (IT Group) ended its operations as a registered company in Romania; starting this date, IT Group operates as an informal collective focusing almost exclusively on R&D projects, and the 'itgroup.ro' website will be maintained as a showcase for IT Group's projects and as a contact point for the IT Group staff.@ R&D Partnerships
IT Group is actively seeking R&D partnerships in the IT sector. Most
of the company's previous collaborations were based on IT Group's own
ideas and have been governed by a negotiated version of the IT
Group NDA; however, IT Group is also open to collaborations based
on its potential partners' ideas and projects. An archived version of the IT Group NDA is available for download here.
Design Methodologies Hallmarks
Our design methodologies were developed around three key objectives:- to obtain error-free designs at the very first iteration;
this objective is addressed by allocating an unusually large
fraction of the design time to the analysis and preliminary
documentation stage, and then using systematic testing during the
various implementation stages
- to design zero-tweak portability solutions; this is
achieved by using only open standards-based cross-platform languages
and technologies for both our software and hardware products
- to obtain a very high level of reusability; this is achieved by using hierarchical structures (where ever possible) and generic messaging-based mesh topologies, all implemented using parameterized, object-based design methodologies
Electronic Engineering
Our main electronic engineering activity consists of the elaboration of product specifications based on our customers' requests (and feedback), and the development of synthesis-compliant HDL models. We have over 20 years of experience in VHDL modeling, and over 30 years of experience in electronic design.We currently use a Synopsys synthesis-compliant subset of the VHDL-93 standard as the hardware description language of choice for digital circuit designs, and we test our designs on Xilinx's freeware cross-platform WebPack IDE, a fully-featured VHDL/Verilog simulator based on the industry-standard ModelSim engine. This workflow, together with some other design techniques, allows us to produce portable designs that have a predictable performance when ported from one technology library to another.
For the design of analog circuits and mixed-signal frontends we use both the open source GNU Octave suite and custom-built tools, and we verify all of our analog designs with RTI Microwave's freeware SANA circuit simulator and/or the Qucs open source simulator.
Previous electronic designs covered various areas, including low power and high power RF with complex analog filter designs (the IT Group founders were the first independent collective in Romania to design and build a fully standards-compliant digital synthesis FM transmitter, targeting the then-untapped post-communist East-European FM radio stations market of the early '90s), programmable and non-programmable digital equipment (e.g. microprocessors, digital signal processors, network processors, security processors, etc).
Our current h/w portfolio includes internally designed, proven-in-silicon microprocessors, high performance DSP and Encryption cores, and discrete audio and RF circuits.
Software Engineering
Our software engineering efforts are primarily related to supporting the hardware that we design; however, separate software development is also part of our activity. We have over 30 years of experience in software design, including such areas as utility libraries, compilers and interpreters, digital circuit simulation, software signal processing, small-scale data bases, and various internet technologies.In order to allow for maximum portability of our applications, we currently use standard C++ with STL as the main programming language, and the open source Qt SDK for cross-platform OS integration; similarly, we develop our database modules with a strong focus on standards compatibility by targeting the well-established open source PostgreSQL and SQLite DBMS implementations, and we design our web clients for strict-mode HTML5 / JavaScript / CSS3 compliance. This software design strategy allows trivial porting of our software packages to any of the major desktop and server operating systems (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and MacOS) with virtually no modifications and only minimal OS-dependent configuration files (the cumulated OS-specific configuration files for a software project are typically less than a page of source code).
Documentation
We consider a product's documentation to be a crucial factor in determining the product's usability and maintainability, and we take great pride in the quality of the documentation that accompanies all of our projects. We have over 20 years of experience in writing technical documentation, with all our documentation being provided in open-source cross-platform format.Starting early 2012, we currently author our documentation in OpenDocument HybridPDF format, thus making it readable in any modern PDF reader and editable with a modern LibreOffice suite.