BGC Engineering Announces spin-off of holographic visualization technology to Clirio, Inc.
BGC Engineering Announces spin-off of holographic visualization technology to Clirio, Inc.
Today, BGC Engineering Inc. (BGC) announced that it has transferred its holographic visualization software technology to a new spin-off company. Clirio Inc. has been formed to manage, develop, support and sell the technology known as The Ada Platform (Ada).
BGC, with its commitment to innovation, created Ada to turn its experience and knowledge of client project data into action. With this solution, using the Microsoft HoloLens, experts and non-technical stakeholders can visit an augmented reality digital twin of their project site from anywhere in the world. The Ada Platform has been successfully deployed with customers globally, helping to shape decision making on complex projects.
Steve Hedberg, CEO of BGC says: “I am hugely proud of the work our team has done to get Ada to this point. The ability for holographic visualization of data to contribute to BGC projects and to global earth science practice will be enhanced by this new structure; we should all feel proud about where we are today. I am excited about the future prospects of Ada and look forward to continued collaboration with Clirio, our team and our clients.”
Clirio was formed to set the Ada technology free to fly under the management of a team focused on scaling the software business into new markets and ecosystems. Clirio is headed by CEO Ron Klopfer, who has a track record of over 20 years of leading high-tech startups. Joining Ron in the new venture is the original software development and product management team from the Ada project, eager to move forward on this new venture.
“We are at a moment in time where humanity can truly leverage holographic visualization to fundamentally improve the way we perceive and steward our use of Earth’s surface and subsurface. I’m thrilled to be joining a team that has pioneered extended reality technologies from the very earliest stages,” says Klopfer.
BGC will retain a minority stake in the new company and continue to champion the use of this revolutionary technology internally, and with its clients. Ada has proven itself to be a powerful solution for communicating complex 3D data, such as GIS, CAD, Photogrammetry, LiDAR and subsurface modeling. It allows multiple participants to view and collaborate with true three-dimensional holograms, from desktop to life size.
“The ability to take data out of a monitor and put it into the middle of a room as a hologram, to be able to walk through it and talk to others, is a generational change in applied earth science practice. With this new venture the development will accelerate and better solutions for more projects globally will result,” says Bill Burton, BGC’s VP of Innovation.
Clirio has a distinct advantage as a new entrant in the marketplace, as it is inheriting a proven software solution and seasoned team to develop and implement exciting new features such as remote collaboration and data annotation in the near future. Ada is already a powerful and easy-to-use tool that allows users to drag-and-drop the 3D data they are already using today to quickly create and implement holograms in the cloud. Ada uses Microsoft’s secure Azure cloud technology, with viewing available on the HoloLens 2 mixed reality device, and iOS phones and tablets.
–30–
BGC Engineering Inc. (BGC) is a privately-owned, international consulting firm that provides professional services in applied earth sciences. It has 500 employees in offices across Canada, as well as in the US and Chile. Our practice was established in 1990, based on a specialized appreciation of the impacts of geology on engineered structures. This continues to be our foundation today, enabling us to address a broad spectrum of engineering and environmental issues related to development in challenging terrain.
For more information on BGC Engineering, please contact Lindi Braund (lbraund@bgcengineering.ca).
For more information on Clirio, please contact Keith Lay (klay@clirio.tech)
Web resources: