Startups

Startups are not just entrepreneurial ventures, they're catalysts for innovation and essential components of academic ecosystems. By engaging with startups, students cultivate essential entrepreneurial skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and adaptability, while gaining hands-on experience in every facet of startup development, from ideation to market launch. As an academic lab, our commitment to fostering innovation and entrepreneurial spirit has been instrumental in producing numerous startups that have made significant impacts both locally and globally. These startups not only commercialize our research but also serve as vehicles for economic growth and societal advancement. Some notable examples include but are not limited to:

StarMobile, Inc.: Codeless Mobilization for Enterprise Applications

Enterprises use packaged or custom-built software applications for their business processes. With the explosive growth in the adoption of mobile devices, there is increased pressure to mobilize these applications for consumption on mobile devices. The problem is that the cost to mobilize enterprise applications can actually exceed the original cost to implement those systems. Prof. Sivakumar and his students developed MORPH, an application transformation protocol that programmatically transforms the desktop application into a mobile app, within a matter of minutes and without requiring any software development. Dr. Cheng-Lin Tsao, Dr. Sandeep Kakumanu, and Prof. Sivakumar led the productization efforts for MORPH. StarMobile was venture-funded by US Venture Partners, the Georgia Research Alliance, the WIN Group, and other angel investors, and was based out of Atlanta. Its customers included Coca-Cola Enterprises, Gannett, AB InBev, Mondelez International, and others. StarMobile was identified as a “Cool Vendor” by the reputed analyst firm Gartner. StarMobile was acquired by PowWow, Inc., in 2016.

Asankya, Inc.: Parallel Networking for Enterprise Storage

Enterprises today routinely rely on Cloud Computing, Storage, and SaaS vendors and cope with bi-directionally transferring large data files over a wide variety of connection types and from geographically disparate locations. Prof. Sivakumar and his students developed one of the first parallel networking solutions that also had transport layer awareness. The approach, called RAPID, has multiple patents issued and pending, all co-authored by Prof. Sivakumar. RAPID was the technology basis for Asankya, Inc., a startup founded by Prof. Sivakumar that offered a network optimization service called RAPIDnet to combat the Internet traffic scalability issue. The technology was based on the dissertation research of Dr. Hung-yun Hsieh. Aravind Velayutham and Prof. Sivakumar led the productization efforts for RAPID. Asankya was venture-funded by Veritas Venture Partners, In-Q-Tel, the Seraph Group, and multiple angel investors. Asankya was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2011 to facilitate accelerated data transfers between federated data centers. EMC owns 29% of the total storage market in the world.

EG Technology, Inc.: Video Delivery over IP Networks

Video traffic over the last two decades has exploded to unforeseen proportions. EG Technology was founded in 2001 and developed next generation video encoding and transport solutions for the cable TV industry to combat the meteoric rise in the amount of video traffic. Prof. Sivakumar’s research developed the Multimedia Transport Protocol (MMTP) used by EGT for video delivery over less-expensive IP networks. EGT was venture-funded by Sevin Rosen Funds, Noro-Moseley Partners, and the Georgia Research Alliance. The Arris Group acquired EGT in 2009.