Most Promising Asian TechnoVisionaries

Amid the global economic gloom and uncertainties, Asia has been heralded as the one region that analysts say will emerge stronger than its counterparts when the financial storm subsides.

Matthew Boon, managing vice president at Gartner, said in a recent briefing that significant growth is expected out of Asia in 2009, driven by the region's powerhouses--China and India. Emerging economies such as Vietnam, are also expected to enjoy growth. Boon noted that when the economy recovers, historically, Asian countries have been able to grow at a rate even faster than when the economy turned bad.

IDC this week also described Asia as "the bright spot" in the global marketplace, noting that the region's stability has been buoyed by strong growth over the past decade.

As Asia increases its footprint in the global landscape, so too will its homegrown IT shops. It is with this in mind that ZDNet Asia recognizes an exclusive group of Most Promising Asian TechnoVisionaries, as part of the Top Tech 50 awards.

These companies represent the region's homegrown market players that have consistently shown great potential and strong commitment to drive their companies forward, even if they may be small in size. They were judged on their technology innovation, commitment to research and development, business model, customer strategy, market potential, investor/financial record and creative branding/marketing.

The Most Promising Asian TechnoVisionaries for 2008/2009 are:

• BoxSentry
• Elitecore Technologies
• Quantum Inventions
• RadianTrust

Singapore-based Box Sentry focuses on protecting legitimate e-mail by eliminating false positives to make sure that good e-mail gets through to the recipients. Its flagship antispam product, RealMail, integrates self-learning algorithms, multi-layered heuritistics, positive reputation data and sender authentication.

Elitecore Technologies became the first Indian company to provide a unified threat management (UTM) appliance, when in 2005, it added firewall, gateway antivirus and antispam features to its Web content filtering software. Its core product, Cyberoam, also incorporates a "unique capability" that lets it pinpoint the exact user involved in a security breach, rather than only identifying the Internet Protocol (IP) address of a machine.

Headquarted in Singapore, Quantum Inventions helps motorists and fleet owners by providing traffic information in real-time so they can determine optimal travel routes and in turn, reduce costs and increase efficiency.

By focusing on research and development (R&D), another Singapore company, RadianTrust, effectively proves authenticity of paper documents, and stays a step ahead of fast-changing counterfeiting technology. It allocates 70 percent of its revenue to R&D and more than 60 percent of the company's staff is dedicated to product development.