United States site instead?New company well-positioned for worldwide success with strong technology, dedicated focus and experienced leadership
BUDAPEST, January 17, 2001 – Graphisoft, developer of the Virtual Building™ concept and GDL object technology, announced today that it incorporated GDL Technology Services Ltd. with about 1M Euro share capital to be a service provider to building product manufacturers and retailers, and electronic catalog publishers.
The mission for the new company is to promote the role of GDL as the most appropriate electronic object format for the marketing and sale of manufacturers’ products in the building industry. GDL Technology will provide solutions for efficient access to manufacturer product data in the e-commerce environment for design and construction and facility management companies.
The initial product line of the new company will be GDL Object Explorer, GDL Object Web Plug-in, GDL Object Adapter and the GDL Object Publisher, developed by Graphisoft in the last two years. These GDL Object Tools offer a powerful delivery environment for GDL product catalogs and will be further enhanced and made available for a broader range of clients. The company will also provide services in information design and GDL catalog creation for partners and manufacturers of building components.
András Haidekker has been appointed as the CEO of the new company. Haidekker previously held the position of president of the successful Graphisoft UK subsidiary, which enjoyed 80 percent sales growth last year. Prior to that, he spent more than 10 years in senior software development and sales management positions at Graphisoft headquarters.
“To found a dedicated company with strong development, application support and customization resources is a must if we want to serve the building industry globally with our GDL technology,” said Haidekker.
Stefan Larsson of Lasercad in Sweden serves as GDL Technology’s vice president of marketing. Larsson joins the company after spending the last 14 years as CEO and founder of Lasercad, a Graphisoft distributor and developer partner for 10 years. Lasercad is one of the leading companies in information technology in CAD, 3D modeling and e-catalogs for web and CD-ROM.
Larsson remarked, “I’m convinced that object technology will be the largest shift in the industry since CAD was invented. Because GDL technology covers the whole object lifecycle, users of high-end CAD products including Archicad, CADLink and ArchiFM will receive tremendous productivity benefits as GDL becomes the preferred object format of the building industry.”
The new company based its development center and headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, and is expected to open branch offices in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States initially.