99X Technology Sweeps Up Two Awards at NBQSA 2013

Online, November 20, 2013 (Newswire.com) - Setting an indelible mark on Sri Lanka's rapidly developing ICT industry, software product engineering specialist 99X Technology swept up two awards at the recently concluded National Best Quality ICT Awards (NBQSA) 2013 in its initial year of participation in the competition.

The company picked up a bronze award for 'WAG - Web Accessibility Guide' in the R&D category and a merit for the iPad app 'ALMUR' in the Tools and Infrastructure Applications category.

"Research and development is fundamental to our strategy, keeping in line with our aim to constantly innovate. Hence, the award signifies our commitment towards reaching this goal," stated 99X Technology Co-Founder and CEO Mano Sekaram when commenting on these achievements.

The app ALMUR is a product suite that enables binary decision-making based on approximate logic, capable of making decisions for cases expressed in vague human terms. A typical question asked from ALMUR would be: 'If the student's Math grade is high, English grade is low and Geography grade is somewhat high, should we pass the student?' ALMUR deals with problems like this using a theory known as 'fuzzy logic'.
ALMUR libraries are also currently being used in two iOS navigation apps, 'Norge-serien' and 'Boating Norway', and their popularity has proved that the use of a fuzzy logic rule base is far better than any other logic based solution that was available.

Interestingly enough, this app was built by a project team that consisted mostly of interns from a couple of higher education institutes and universities in the country, brought in through 99X Technology's university relationship programme, who worked side-by-side with experienced in-house staff, which speaks volumes about the abilities of the up and coming talent in the country.

The Web Accessibility Guide (WAG) addresses a challenging requirement for websites today - to be accessible to millions of visually impaired users. WAG is a toolset that makes the internet friendlier to visually handicapped people and packages four products with its toolset, namely WAG DevKit, WAG Report, WAG Assistant and WAG Community.

Three kinds of visual impairments are considered in WAG - total blindness, low vision and colour blindness. It assists developers and reviewers to identify accessibility flaws on websites and applications, while also enabling visually impaired people to apply accessibility corrections automatically on websites they access. The team that built WAG has also provided a user-friendly interface in order to encourage volunteers and developers to enrich the software by testing it and submitting new rules.

Organised by the BCS The Chartered Institute for IT Sri Lanka (BCSSL) Section, NBQSA is an annual event open to 16 categories of software ranging from applications and infrastructure tools software to media and entertainment applications software. The objectives of the awards are threefold - to provide recognition to outstanding achievements of individuals and organisations in Sri Lanka that have contributed to the development of ICT, to create a window to gain international recognition for locally developed ICT products and to improve standards and the quality of local ICT products and services to be able to compete in the international marketplace.

99X Technology, since its inception over a decade ago, has rapidly built itself up to become a leading player in Sri Lanka's IT/BPO industry. Headquartered in Colombo with offices in Oslo, Norway, the company specialises in delivering high-end software products to independent software vendors (ISVs) worldwide and has, to date, delivered over 100 high quality commercial software products. As a testament to its best practices and attention towards the development of its workforce, it was placed among the 15 Great Places To Work For in Sri Lanka this year and cinched an award for talent management at the fourth Asia's Best Employer Brand Awards 2013 in Singapore, amongst many other accolades.