One of the lesser-known partners in IFN:
formation.com
Formation is a solutions engineering company with a focus on WAN/LAN communications and multimedia markets. Annual revenues are approximately $25 million. The Balance Sheet is very strong with no debt and no invested capital and a current ratio greater than 3.0.
Formation's business model provides customers with a unique collaborative approach to product development and specialty engineering. The company's disciplined process engages Formation engineers in a partner relationship with customers from raw concepts through engineering design to production and continuation engineering. This process is ISO 9001 certified and is efficient and cost effective with an outstanding time-to-market record.
Formation is a full service provider and has products and systems flowing into highly dynamic markets, including in-flight entertainment, avionics, air traffic control, call centers, live TV on aircraft, specialized multimedia, and data communications.
Formation's solid customer base includes Rockwell Collins Passenger Systems, a division of Rockwell International. Rockwell Collins announced a digital video entertainment system for commercial aircraft in early 1998. Since the announcement, this division of Rockwell has secured a 50% market share of in-flight-entertainment orders. Formation designed and manufactures a significant portion of the hardware and software delivered with each system. The third quarter roll out of the video-on-demand upgrade features Formation MPEG Servers. This system leverages Formation's expertise in MPEG clients, telephone, and both NT and MPEG servers. These servers include Formation's Environmental Protection of Disks (EPOD) storage technology. This unique reliability enhancement includes proprietary software and hardware technology that enable the drives to withstand a high degree of vibration, shock, temperature, humidity, and pressure variation.
Formation will assist in the systems architecture and is the exclusive supplier of streaming disk servers for In Flight Network (IFN). IFN is a joint venture recently announced between News Corp and Rockwell International to put live TV on commercial aircraft. The served market for this product is over 10,000 commercial aircraft. Introduction is forecasted for the third quarter of 2001.
Rockwell Collins Air Transport is developing a system, which will provide real time analysis of flight operations to the cockpit and to the ground via satellite and ground station communications. Email in the cockpit and to the cabin will also be provided. Formation will supply specialized servers for this program.
Formation has developed unique record and replay technology, which provides fully integrated synchronization of multiple recording channels for both voice and data with immediate synchronized replay. This technology is applied in the air traffic control, call center and financial markets and is currently being installed at all US Navy air stations, worldwide. [MORE] |
