Alpha Systems Inc.

Research & Development

With the realization of a global scale network accessible by all, our lifestyles are changing dramatically. This global scale network, the Internet is creating a new communications society. For a number of years now, we have been working to develop software that will provide a communications infrastructure. We made practical use of the expertise we have acquired through research and development to help create vibrant communications society.

IP Communications Systems R&D

1. R&D of messenger systems targeting companies

As VoIP-based IP telephony achieves more widespread application, SIP-based telecommunication control is becoming standard. With comprehensive research and development in areas ranging from SIP-based middleware to applications, we are creating and bringing to market the communications products of the future.

2. R&D of high-quality Internet VPN router

We use Internet VPN to construct high-quality, thoroughly reliable networks that can also be used in-house. We have even applied our research outcomes in this area to our own internal network.

Published magazine article

   Our company's researcher has written the article titled as "How much bandwidth WAN accelerators effect network throughput" in NIKKEI SYSTEMS, December 2008 edition. The article focuses on comparative verification of throughput improvement of several WAN accelerator appliances.

3. Secure Remote Access System

For improving the corporate network services, we have been working on the research and development of the secure remote access system. This system provides users with the secure way to remotely operate their PC in the intranet from their home PC. Accumulating our outcomes of the R & D, we have launched the product named "alpha Teleworker 2008".

R&D of technology for connecting DLNA/UPnP and sensor networks

Alpha Systems has joined the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and are now developing DLNA/UPnP stacks. The Company is also working on the development of technology to connect DLNA/UPnP to sensor networks, in readiness for the future expansion of sensor networks

Research outcomes achieved for external projects

• Participation in NEDO’s Digital Information Device Interoperability
     Infrastructure Project Serving as the Kawasaki Wing of the Interoperability Technology Association for Information Processing, Japan’s distributed research laboratories, we are involved in the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)’s "Digital Information Appliance Interoperability Technology Project（Development of Remote Management Platform for Information Appliances）" . Here we are involved in developing ZigBee network technology for linking up digital information appliances like audio-visual devices and household appliances with wireless sensor networks.
• R&D to create lifestyle-oriented network services that are user-friendly and cater to the increasing use of IPv6
     We have conducted research and development with the aim of realizing middleware functions that enable autonomous and dispersed self-organization between information appliances to suit various different types of services. Our experience in this area will be of great benefit to DLNA basic research.

Research and development into open source application systems

1. KNOPPIX: The Live CD Linux

Since 2002, in conjunction with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST), we have been involved in the research and development of CD bootable Linux KNOPPIX.

Network Boot System Using KNOPPIX

   A ubiquitous environment can be created through the use of KNOPPIX. Users can access and operate their own environment from any location at any time. Our overriding research aim in this area has been to free ourselves from the constraints of real space.

Research outcomes achieved for external projects

• Open School Platform Project 2007 sponsered by Center for Educational Computing (CEC)
      This project aims to build a platform for the use of PC based on open source software (OSS) in school education. We have participated as a support company since FY2006 and been supporting 19 schools across Japan to use OSS.
• Accelerated-KNOPPIX: The LiveCD Revolution
      Our research outcomes in this area have won high acclaim overseas, as they have made live CDs a reality and also achieved even faster booting. Be sure to try this out.
  
• Proving test for the use of open source software in school and educational settings
  (IPA’s Infrastructure Building Program for Open Source Software)
     Teachers working in school computer labs are primarily concerned with maintenance. We have proposed a new mode of teaching that makes use of open source software, conducting verification tests in eight schools around Japan. The response to our efforts in this area has been very good.

2. MultiVNC: Integrated desktop supervising

MultiVNC is an open source software that enables the integrated management of PC screens on multiple terminals. This will help teachers to detect which students are having trouble straight away. A number of parties have offered to cooperate in this project, given the multilingualization of this open source software. Thanks to this, there are now English, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Romanian language locales available, with this software being used right around the world.

Since 2007, MultiVNC version 2.0 has been released. It supports a new feature, auto-detecting students who fall behind others in the computer exercise.

Research outcomes achieved for external projects

• MultiVNC
  

Web 2.0 Technology

1. Joint research with the National Institute of Informatics

Through joint research with the National Institute of Informatics, we have been working on building cutting-edge Web technology and laying the groundwork for new technology development. Utilizing next-generation technologies for both the Internet and intranets, we will continue to uncover new needs and pursue research in areas that will be developed into new businesses.

Academic conference presentation

   In INGS 2008 Shenyang, our company's researcher made a presentation about "QueReSeek", the community-based web navigation by reverse lookup of search history, and proposed the web-browse system that promotes knowledge sharing in a community.

2. Basic technology of Web2.0

We have been conducting the research and development concerning the basic technologies relied on by a large number of web applications and web services.

Published magazine article

   Our company's researcher has written the article titled as "The performance of web frameworks" in NIKKEI SYSTEMS July 2008 edition. The article focuses on performance comparison of popular web application frameworks including Ruby on Rails, Django, Catalyst, and Zend Framework.

Image Processing Technology

Through joint research with the Akita University, we have been working on R & D of advanced image processing technology concerned with the recognition of human. Now that people use digital pictures and videos, our technology on this area takes on importance and we have been promoting our study to launch new business in which the image processing technology is applicable.

Published magazine article

   Our company researchers summarized our study results and wrote the article titled as "Robust image processing technology for extracting human skin regions from color-casted images". This article appeared the IMAGE LAB November 2008 edition and explained how to extract human skin regions from color-casted images, and the evaluation of the method.