Company Overview

This decade has seen dramatic improvements in display technology. These improvements have produced an explosion of uses for graphics displays in desktop, workstation and embedded systems. From in-car navigation systems, mobile phones and portable mp3 players to airports and power plants, flat panel displays have become ubiquitous. Consequently, the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) has become a critical product differentiator. It is the face, the first impression, the warm smile and firm handshake. The HMI is the window into the array of powerful and valuable product features.

While display technology has improved dramatically, graphics and HMI software technology has lagged – producing many abysmal user interfaces. This occurs because today’s complex, programmer-centric HMI tools discourage the participation of the graphics artists, industrial designers and application experts needed most to develop effective user interfaces.

Altia's mission is to provide a cohesive, easy to use set of HMI development tools that help creative, customer focused designers build and deliver great user interfaces. Altia's tools are used from concept to final code and thus maximize productivity and re-use. With Altia's tools, manufacturers can deliver HMIs much faster while producing higher quality user interfaces. It is these high quality user interfaces that form the foundation of market-leading products.

Altia is unique because it offers solutions that bridge the gap between the widely dissimilar needs of the creative, artistic process and the programmer. Altia addresses the artistic side by providing a WYSIWYG graphics and HMI editor that allows the artist to draw and import graphics from his or her favorite graphics design tools. Altia helps the programmer by providing code generators, language translators, APIs and OS specific graphics libraries that convert the artist’s HMI design into deployable code that can be integrated with the programmer's application code and run on a wide variety of operating systems and hardware. The success of Altia is built on our unique ability to meet both of these needs.

History

In 1991, four Hewlett Packard embedded systems developers discovered a need for graphics tools to prototype instrumentation front panels. These engineers spun-off and founded Altia to develop products to meet this need.

Altia's first customers were medical, test and measurement and automotive companies such as HP, Fluke, and GM, who were interested in modeling early design concepts. Altia founders developed a simple, yet powerful graphical user interface builder that integrated specifications from simulation tools to create a fully functional virtual prototype. In 1992, Altia released its first product, Altia Design 1.0, which allowed product developers to create an interactive, custom, virtual front panel without writing graphics code.

Today, Altia's customers connect these virtual prototypes to a variety of simulation and modeling tools so as to capitalize on their large investment in models. In 2000, Altia released its first code generation product called DeepScreen, which turns prototype HMIs into deployable code.

Privately held and self funded, Altia has been profitable since the release of its first product in 1992. The original four co-founders are still full time participants in Altia as managers and developers.