From patrick.schouller@inria.fr Thu Mar 25 12:35 MET 1999
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Patrick Schouller 
Subject: Virtech (Bulgarie) =?iso-8859-1?Q?émanation?= de
	=?iso-8859-1?Q?l=27université?= de Sofia propose ses competences
	pour les activites communautaires

MEFI-SEI-DiGITIP-STSI-SDPP-PS-1999-147

V I R T E C H    Ltd.
Virtual Technologies Ltd.
Sofia, Bulgaria


C O M P A N Y      P R O F I L E


Address:   "Khan Asparuh" str. 49, Entrance A, Apt. 7,  Sofia 1000, Bulgaria

Mailing address:  P. O. Box  466,  Central  Post  Office,  Sofia  1000, Bulgaria

Tel.:          (+359-2)-981-47-62, (+359-2)-89-02-77

Tel./fax:    (+359-2)-981-55-41

e-mail:       virtech@mail.techno-link.com

URL:         http://www.techno-link.com/clients/virtech

Type:         Private company  - a  SME  (small enterprise)
Size:          11 permanent staff  plus more than 30 contract-based
employees,  mostly from Sofia
                   University and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
President:  Dr. Roumen Nikolov, Associate Professor, Head of  the Department
of Information
                   Technologies, Sofia University
                   Tel.: (+359-2)-625-6511
                   e-mail:    roumen@fmi.uni-sofia.bg
Trade Director:    Vesselin Spiridonov.
                   e-mail:    vspirid@fmi.uni-sofia.bg

About:     Virtech Ltd. was created in 1996 as a  "business extension"  of
Sofia University Department of Information Technologies (Dept. of IT -
http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg  ) on   the principle of  "Business
Incubator". The strategy of Virtech Ltd. is to work with people mostly on
contract  (project)  basis. During 1997 it concluded 65 such contracts and
this number is expected to increase in 1998 when  Virtech Ltd.  and the
Department of Information Technologies were involved together in three
European projects under programs INCO  COPERNICUS and PHARE:

-  INCO  COPERNICUS  project  MALL 2000  - "Mall for online business beyond
the year 2000";               	
- INCO  COPERNICUS project  LARFLAST - "Learning foreign language scientific
terminology";
-  PHARE project DEMAND   -  "Design, implementation and management of
telematics based distance education".

      These projects are giving the company direct access to the advanced
information and education technologies and to leading foreign teams from
both universities and industry.



Affiliations
abroad:

     Virtech Ltd. works closely with its foreign partners:

1. KPMG  Human  Performance Technology  Business  Unit, Deventer,  The
Netherlands  -  in  the  field  of  information systems and multimedia
software development  under  long  term contract.  A special team  was
created  by  VIRTECH in 1996  to work  permanently on KPMG  tasks and  a
new technology   of  distant  programming   was  developed   for
      permanent   working  contacts   between  the   programmers of  both
sides.
2.   ANDERSEN  CONSULTING,  Amsterdam,   Netherlands  -  in 1997  Virtech
completed a   new version of the software  product  COCOS  -  an  education
tool   for  developers  of      training   materials  and  distributes   it
under  a   Software development,  purchase  and  license  agreement.
3.  IEA  -  The International Association  for the Evaluation of Educational
Achievements,   Amsterdam,  The  Netherlands  -   on   development   and
support    of    the   web-pages   of
      IEANCEE   -   the  IEA  Network  for  Central  and Eastern Europe.
4.  NOVA  ELEKTRONIK  GmbH,   Pulheim,  Germany  -  for  support  of  a
large  electronic  parts data base  under a long-term  contract.
5.  The partners in the European Projects consortia.


Main  European  projects  and  initiatives

1. INCO-COPERNICUS  project  No.  977041   MALL 2000

The aim of the project is to design, develop and implement an electronic
commerce environment - MALL2000, providing a set of business-to-business
services, training and consultations to SME in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic
and other CEE countries for business contacts with partners in European
Union. It is an Internet-based client-server application where the services
are provided through the MALL2000 servers and the clients (subscribers) have
access to them by using mainly the standard web browser.
Partners of the project consortium are: University of Sofia - Dept. of IT
(Bulgaria), University of Technology - Darmstadt (Germany), Virtech Ltd.,
Stylo srl. - Bologna (Italy), Object Technology Deutschland (Germany), DEC
International BV - Galway (Ireland), Technical University - Brno (Czech
Republic) and Directnet Consult.Ltd. - Brno (Czech Republic).

2. INCO-COPERNICUS  project  No.  977074   LARFLAST

The aim of the project is to develop intelligent tools to assist users from
some CEE/NIS countries in foreign language learning specifically aimed at
the learning of scientific, technical language. The approach of the project
is to apply natural language processing techniques in developing a generic
intelligent foreign language terminology learning system which can be easily
adapted to different source languages, target languages and
scientific/technical areas.
Partners of the project consortium are: University of Leeds (UK), University
of Sofia - Dept. of IT (Bulgaria), Virtech Ltd., University of Milan
(Italy), Romanian Academy - Center for Advanced Research in Machine
Learning, Simferopol State University (Ukraine) and University of Manchester
(UK).

3.   PHARE    project    No.  ETF/98/VET/0003    DEMAND

The project aims at developing a meta-level course for educational managers
and practitioners at higher and further education level in order to be able
to design and implement distance education courses using telematics.
Partners of the project consortium are: University of Sofia - Dept. of IT
(Bulgaria), Virtech Ltd., Sofia University Distance Education Center
(Bulgaria), National Distance Educational Center - Tirana (Albania), Tallinn
University (Estonia), University of Twente (Netherlands) and PLT Ltd., Greece.

4.  DEVELOPMENT   OF  TELEWORK   IN   BULGARIA

Together with University of Sofia Department of Informatiom Technologies
Virtech Ltd. is collaborating with ETO - The European Telework  Development
Initiative     http://www.eto.org.uk   , taking part in its activities and
being the enquery point of ETO for Bulgaria. Virtech Ltd. is initiator of
creating the Bulgarian Telework Association.


Conference
organizing &
publishing:        "Proceedings  of   IFIP   WG 3.3   Working  Conference
"Human  Computer
                   Interaction   and Educational Tools",  Sozopol, Bulgaria,
May 1997.
                           "Proceedings of  the Eighth International PEG
Conference  (PEG'97)",  Sozopol,
                   Bulgaria,  May-June 1997.
		"EUROLOGO'99"  -  the  biannual  European Conference on LOGO and
                   learning, Sofia, August 1999:  (
http://iea.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/eurologo99   ).

Other
Research &
Development
Activities:  Distributed   information   systems  development,   Internet
and   Intranet   software   solutions   and   services,  Business   on   the
Internet   support,  custom  multimedia software  development, Web Site
Creation and  Management, WWW based  training.
****************************************************************
                        Patrick SCHOULLER
      MINISTERE DE L'ECONOMIE, DES FINANCES ET DE L'INDUSTRIE
                SECRETARIAT D'ETAT A L'INDUSTRIE
Direction Generale de l'Industrie, des Technologies de l'Information et des
Postes
     Service des Technologies et de la Société de l'Information
	    3/5 rue Barbet de Jouy   75353 PARIS  07 SP
Telephone : + 33 1 43 19 34 25    Telecopie : + 33 1 43 19 35 51
Archive de la liste : http://www.evariste.org/actu/schouller/
http://www.industrie.gouv.fr.   http://www.telecom.gouv.fr
****************************************************************