Skinkers, communication you can't miss

Guidewire Group, the leading global technology research firm and producers of Innovate!Europe, announced today that it has named Skinkers a 'Guidewire Group Global Innovator'. As a recipient of this elite award, Skinkers has been selected to participate in Guidewire's exclusive Innovate!Showcase at Innovate!Europe 2006, from 15-17 May in Zaragoza, Spain.

Skinkers' unique push technology and forward thinking management team of CEO Matteo Berlucchi, COO Rob Noble and MD David Long set it apart from hundreds of other companies under consideration. The company's technology pushes messages and notifications at scheduled times so that they appear in front of all other content on users desktops. The messages are presented to the recipient through branded windows and ticker-tapes that can contain text, images, surveys, video or other forms of media. The solution ensures messages cannot be missed, creating visibility through increasingly cluttered communications channels such as web sites, intranets, email, SMS and IM.

"We are delighted to be named as a Guidewire Group Global Innovator", said Matteo Berlucchi, CEO of Skinkers. "We feel our inclusion confirms our success and shows that our innovative approach to push technology is being recognized by the industry. We believe direct and visible communication with customers, employees and partners is vital to all today's organizations with so many potential channels open to them and our solution provides that for customers".

Executives from Skinkers will be among the several hundred senior technology leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, customers, media, and government officials that will gather at Innovate!Europe in Zaragoza to discover what new threats, opportunities, and challenges face Europe's entrepreneurial technology companies as they move toward 2007.

“The quality of European entrepreneurs is extremely high and our meetings with senior executives during the past several months have revealed many talented innovators, as evidenced by the companies we have chosen for the Innovate!Showcase,” said Chris Shipley, Guidewire Group co-Founder, Global Research Director, and Executive Producer of Innovate!Europe. “In bringing together the 'cream-of-the-crop' innovators with investors, early-adopters, and other members of the innovation ecosystem, we aim to help accelerate the transformation of this raw talent into commercial success.”

As the respected host of the DEMO Conferences in the United States for the past 11 years, Guidewire Group's Global Research Director, Shipley has helped hundreds of companies enter emerging markets. Indeed, for Skinkers solutions to be chosen by Chris as a set of leading-edge products for marketing promotions, e-CRM, News/RSS and enterprise communications is a mark of credibility and excellence that has propelled more than a thousand entrepreneurial companies to success.

Chris and her team of analysts spent several months personally screening European technology companies to identify the leading innovators chosen to participate in Innovate!Europe 2006. Companies were evaluated on several criteria, including:

• Unique approach to the target market

• Advancement of state-of-the-art technology, business model, or design in the target market

• Importance of the problem addressed

• Size of the market opportunity

• Length of time the produce or service has been in the market

• Implications in and for the global technology market

• Capabilities to move the product to the global stage.

Additional details on Innovate!Europe 2006 and the Innovate!Showcase program can be found online at www.innovate-events.com