Giulio Viezzoli“... a life under full sail”

by Emil Abirascid

Printed by Sagraf Castelferretti (Ancona)Photo by Benedetto TraniGraphics and Lay out by Studio Pixel AnconaPhotographic sources from the Viezzoli family’s personal archive

Reserved reproduction

Printed in May 2008

For my parents

INDEX

Preface pag., 7

The right route pag. 9

Pirano, Istria pag. 13

Padua - Algeria - Padua pag. 27

Turin pag. 35

Milan pag. 41

Ancona pag. 51

Elisabetta, the family pag. 57

Giorgio, Marco, Elena, Giulia and Laura pag. 69

Sailing and technology pag. 83

Aethra pag. 103

Videocommunication and its applications pag. 117

Liberalization and Internationalization pag. 127

The future pag. 139

Appendices pag. 153

PREFACE

Innovators have a twinkle in their eyes. Those who have an idea and want to convert it

into a business, who illustrate, recommend and support that idea persuasively and

enthusiastically. Innovators do exist, coming out from universities, company research

laboratories. They take their first steps as businessmen in places such as technological

districts, tech-incubators, and science parks, summoning up all their energies to bring their

ideas and companies to success. Only a few succeed.

Giulio Viezzoli is one of these, an innovator who started to trace out his path in a period

when nobody was thinking of “start-up” or “spin-off ” nor of “venture capital” or “early

stage”. Giulio is an innovator who looked around and chose the right direction, letting

himself be guided by his experience and a far-sighted view of the future.

15 years working in the Research and Development sector of a North American

telecommunication company enabled him to achieve the maximum responsibility in

group management. It was then that Giulio decided to go where “the sea, the wind and

sailing” were.

So he went to the coast, he created a family, blessed with 5 children, and in order not to

leave the sea again, he was compelled to become an entrepreneur. And so Aethra was

born.

Today Giulio has handed over the reins of the company to his children, but he still looks

to the future, busying himself with technical and engineering issues. He hasn’t lost his

passion for finding new roads to develop, of facing new challenges. Nowadays his eyes

twinkle more than ever.

Emil Abirascid

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The right route

Giulio Viezzoli at the helm

The wind never blows in the right direction for those who do not know where to goSeneca

The sea is life’s origin and the wind is its developmentGiulio

April 1st 1966 was an important day in the life of Giulio Viezzoli. Theprow of his sail boat, a nine meter cruiser, whose name Gis meant a lotto him, was heading towards the port of Ancona where a new

professional challenge was awaiting him. Having piloted sail boats since he was ayoung boy, Giulio had learned to think in advance, to foresee the suddenchanges in the winds and the sea, and to choose the right direction to sail. Heknew the right moment to sail close to the wind, to bear up, or when to changethe sails, judging the strength and the direction of the wind.

The Adriatic coast was coming closer.Giulio had probably just made the most important choice of his life: he had justturned down an interesting offer that would have taken him to live on the Coted’Azur. Instead he chose to stay in Italy, on the Adriatic Sea; the sea that hadbeen his companion since childhood and throughout his youth, even thoughback then he was familiar with the Slovenian part of the coast. He was consciousthat his new future would begin as soon as the moorings had anchored his shiponto the pier of the port of Ancona. He faced a future laden with uncertaintiesbut full of expectations that charged him with enthusiasm. History was to be onhis side.

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Pirano, Istria

Pirano D’Istria – Giulio when he was three years old (2nd from the right in the first row) with Corinna(the first from the right), grandparents and cousins

Life can be understood only looking back, but life can only be lived looking forwardSoren Kierkegaard

Giulio Viezzoli was born on August 2, 1925 in Pirano, Istria. Althoughtoday Istria is Slovenian, at that time the city belonged to Italy. Indeed,since 1200 in Istria the Venetian dialect, Giulio’s real native language,

was spoken.

The world in which he grew up was a simple one, a society in which only ahandful could really say that they received a scholastic education worthy of thename.The youth enjoyed spending their time together, singing and breathing sea-life which, for the locals of coastal towns not only represented a source of living,but also a horizon to reach out towards.

Giulio’s intense relationship with the sea began very early and his love for sailboats bloomed just as early. “The sail boat is a school of life, it teaches you tolook towards the future, to foresee what will happen and make decisions” heloves to repeat to others, but most of all to himself, “and then”, he adds, “youalso need the right amount of favorable wind”. Favorable wind for a boat iscompared to the right dose of good fortune that helps the events of everydaylife. Giulio learned to recognize and appreciate good fortune, which, althoughalone isn’t enough, helps the concepts of knowledge.

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His first piece of good luck was to be born and raised within a solid andharmonious family, which, although not rich, was comfortable. His father Giorgioworked in the City Hall of Pirano, Istria, a small coastal town 12 nautical milesfrom Trieste. “When I was little” Giulio recalls “my mother would tell me aboutmy father’s experiences during the First World War; he was stationed on thebattleship Radezky which belonged to the Austrian fleet. At 5 O’ clock in themorning on May 24, 1915 the Radezky was lined up along the coast betweenRavenna and Pescara.The stretch of coastline opposite Loreto was assigned tothe battleship Radezky. My father’s ship began to bombard the coast. “What agood morning greeting we gave those poor people” he would say to me. Afterso many years, almost wanting to compensate for the troubles that interlacedwith the story of my family and national and international events, I live exactlyon the coast my father’s ship had bombarded, and I married a local girl, true tothe legend that history will have its revenge”.

Giulio’s mother totally devoted herself to her home and three children. Giuliohad two older siblings, Mario who was eleven years older than him, and Corinna

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Pirano D’Istria 1915 – Corazzata Radetzky, Giorgio Viezzoli, Giulio’s father, is in the second row

who is three years older. Mario had a passion for sports and taught physicaleducation. He received a diploma at the Faculty of Teaching in Trieste andattended a course at the Farnesina (Italian Foreign Affairs Office) in Rome fortwo years, qualifying him to teach in middle school. During the war he spent sixyears in the services training cadet paratroopers.

In his most glorious moment of competitive sports, Mario also became part ofthe national Italian athletics team thanks to his excellent results in javelinthrowing. Corinna, who received a diploma at the Faculty of Teaching, initiallytaught in Pirano, then in 1952 became a teacher in an elementary school inTrieste. It was in the same year that the Italian tricolor flag stopped flying overthe small city; after 9 centuries the musicality of the Venetian dialect, an Italianlanguage, could no longer be heard there.Corinna recalls: “Up until 1940, our family life proceeded smoothly; there was mom,

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Summer 1931 – Giulio with his father Girogioon the sailing boat called Pan

Pirano D’Istria, 1931 – Giuio and his sisterCorinna, with their parents Giorgio and Elena

dad, Mario (1914), me (Corinna 1922), and Giulio. Giulio and I were the youngest ofthe three, and since we were so close in age we always played together during ourchildhood. For us, Mario, being 8 years older than me and 11 years older than Giulio,seemed to be an adult already. But then the hard years came when everythingbecame part of a new dimension: war had broken out. Mario had already completedhis studies in Rome (P.E. teacher); I had almost finished my teachers’ training schoolin Parenzo (Istria); Giulio went to scientific high school in Pisino (Istria). During my lastyear in school in Parenzo, the steamship no longer sailed to Pirano and Trieste, andwhen we returned home for vacation we met up together at Caroiba, a town in thecenter of Istria, by “bus-coach” (an unusual means of transportation for us). Giuliocame from Pisino, and I from Parenzo.The war also affected us: Mario, an officer in the “bersagliere” regiment of the army,set off for Albania from where he came home partly on foot and partly by whatevermeans he could find. Giulio was taken prisoner in Algiers. His return was to be longand hard; he managed to keep in touch with some difficulty and his concern alwayslay with his education and books. In the meantime Mario, who by the end of the war

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Pirano D’Istria, 1931 – The Officers of Pirano. Practise on the Foibe. Giorgio Viezzoli is thefirst from the left in the second row

had become an instructor of cadet paratroopers, was assigned the position ofphysical education teacher at Codogno (Milan), where he met his wife and raised abeautiful and numerous family (four girls, Mirella, Giuseppina, Elena and Tiziana).He moved to Milan but unfortunately, he left us very soon. After getting married Imoved to Trieste, where I had a daughter and taught with great dedication andresponsibility for almost forty years. Giulio, after his return in June of 1946, studiedintensively and got his degree from Padua University and began working in Milan.But his passion for boats was calling him back, first on Lake Garda, then in Tuscanyand later he circumnavigated Italy to reach Trieste. He left Milan because of the 4hour car journey necessary to reach the sea and so came to Ancona, where sea andwork were compatible. He married Elisabetta, created a large family (five children:Giorgio, Marco, Elena, Giulia and Laura) and started a high technology company,which even up until this day he has always followed with his motto “do more and dobetter”, a motto he adopted as a child. We are a long way from our belovedhomeland, but we still feel a bond with it and we are surrounded by the affection ofdear ones.I must say that, during those years and up until now, the example of our parents and

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Summer 1933 – Giulio on his boat with hisfather Giorgio, between Grado and Pirano

Summer 1932 – Giulio on his boat in Portorosein the Gulf of Pirano with some relatives

our mother’s sensible advice are still valid and relevant and they make me feel thatI lived in an ideal, privileged atmosphere. For example, after a hard and laborioustask, she would exclaim in her Venetian dialect “Lord I thank You, I’ve managed to dothis as well!”, so demonstrating her fatigue but also the satisfaction for havingcompleted the job. These are the memories that I am sure make Giulio relivemoments that are certainly part of his childhood and that made it serene andinstructive for his future.The school was our home. In 1929 we gathered snow fromour kitchen windowsill.We played our games in the school playground, chasing eachother and jumping over the iron gate; running around the town from Carareta areato Salatina area, running up the steps to the “Sagrà dei Frati” and then climbing downthe corner of the wall between the last sphere of white stone and the front of theChurch, then going back to Carareta.And then there was the chasing. But there werealso the games we played sitting on the steps of the Church of the “Madonna of theSnow”, or on the school steps. Our street, Calle Antonio Spangaro, was our meetingpoint. In the lobby of the school Giulio and I played together at: “Patron Campanaro”,“patria”, “S’cinche”, with marbles, or colored or clay rocks. Then there were theprocessions of Holy Friday, of “Corpus Domini” or Saint George, the patron saint of

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Summer 1934 – Giulio at Portorose on Pan

Pirano.We also played at the “Scala dei Ponti” and the “Grotta Scalin” and swam anddived in the sea.

Corinna continues: “After his first year at elementary school, when Giulio left hisclassroom, handing his report card to his mum, he said to her: “Have a look at this!It is always the same!”. I was there with our mother and saw how the teachercongratulated the other students, saying “Well done, you have improved”. But shenever said anything to Giulio. His report card always had the same grade: Excellent(back then the grades were: excellent, good, sufficient, insufficient).This push to alwaysdo his best and even better was confirmed in high school when his German teacherdeclared “to learn the strong verbs, that is, the irregular verbs, is not a merit, but notto learn them is an important demerit” (to do one’s duty is not a merit, not to doone’s duty is a great demerit). This has always guided him in every challenge of hislife and helped him to achieve important accomplishments without ever pulling theoars out of the water.”

However, life was not easy and soon an impact with the cruelty of history struck.Between 1947 and 1952, some of Giulio’s school friends and companionsdisappeared in the foibe.

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Pirano D’Istria, 1939 – Class photo of the last year of Junior School. Giulio is the 8th fromthe right, in the fourth row

The name “Foibe” comes from Latin “Fovea” , meaning the surface of a rockyground where over time, in some areas rainfall creates deep wells that can evenreach depths of hundreds of meters.They also can have diameters of 5-8 meterswith cylindrical surfaces from which large spears of rock protrude. This isextremely dangerous for a human body that might accidentally fall into one orbe pushed into one. “I was lowered into one of these holes myself ” Giulioremembers, “when I was six years-old serving as a human “guinea pig” for a firedepartment training-drill which was simulating the rescue of a child. It was anexperience I will never forget.”Today Giulio is the President of the Association Giuliano-Dalmatian A.N.V.G.D.,The National Association Venice-Giulia and Dalmatia that has its headquartersin the province of Ancona. It includes around 100 people, and is a ferventadvocate of the importance of the Memorial Day for the victims of the foibe andof the ethnic cleansing that was carried out against the Italians during thoseyears. “The annual Memorial Day is February 10th. This day has the importantrole of not letting our memory fade but to resist so that similar acts can never

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Pirano D’Istria, 1941 – Giuklio, the first from the right, with the basketball team of Pisino

happen again in any place and for any reason”, Giulio declares.In order to survive Giulio and his family had to escape from Istria, and they foundshelter in Trieste. In their pockets they were carrying what could give them thechance of joining relatives who had not hesitated to abandon a tormented landto rebuild a life on the other side of the planet in Australia, and in doing socompletely changing the course of their lives. But destiny had reserved differentpaths for them.

Giulio’s character was strengthened greatly by the experiences of this period. Inspite of the hardships, he became an incurable optimist, and still remains sotoday. “I believe today that humanity is finally emerging from its prehistoricperiod. My generation, I am told, uses a small percentage of its mental capacities,while earlier with my children and later with my grandchildren I’ve experienceda greater acceleration of intellectual evolution.They have a much livelier, sharper and more open mind.The problem now is forthe teachers who have to keep up with our young people. A few years ago inagreement with the mayor of a small town at the foot of Gran Sasso,TorricellaSicura, we decided to donate desks with built-in computers created especiallyfor students at the elementary and middle school. The main problem was theimpact this technology had on the teachers who weren’t prepared to use it. Itrevealed to be a very enlightening experience that brought us to theunderstanding that the best way was to equip the schools with one computerlaboratory used by students following a timetable and managed by specializedstaff.”Another episode that has been greatly significant for Giulio is when Aethraperfected a system of video communication in order to allow a boy hospitalizedfor long periods to keep in contact with his classmates and his teachers. “Themost beautiful and impressing thing was the reaction of the children, who did allthey could to help their less fortunate classmate”.

Giulio’s life unfolded in a whirlpool of significant changes within the events of theyears during the war and post-war; he was witness to a Europe of great conflicts;he saw the birth of the united Europe of today, the Europe of the commonmarket and trade,“an important Europe”, considers Giulio,“because it succeedsin bestowing a common identity and at the same time in maintaining vivid localtreasures, fruit of the value of individual traditions.”

From his childhood and upbringing in Pisano and Pirano, Giulio preserves strong

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Istrian roots based on honesty, duty and respect for others. He has found thesesame qualities among the inhabitants of the Marche region. Giulio uses hisdouble roots as a great resource that allows him to overcome many barriers anddifficulties and this plunges him forwards. For Giulio Viezzoli the future isdefinitely positive, better than today. It will be a future where all the peopleunited by common values in ever growing groups shall one day become onetrue united world, where everyone lives in peace. These are beliefs that Giulioshares with great enthusiasm free of rhetoric and rich in significance and hope.“During this process”, underlines Giulio while illustrating his view, “the evolutionof technology and knowledge that help tear down cultural, geographical,historical and social barriers is fundamental”.

Giulio continues “Maybe in some remote corner, hidden and solitary, some tearsstill fall remembering a stolen youth, whose roots had been cut. Up there on thehills of Mogoron, I look around and ask myself ‘is this my homeland, is this mysea?’”.

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Pirano D’Istria, 1941 – Giulio with his basketball team mates

Pirano D’Istria, 1942 – Giulio, at the center, with his basketball team mates from Pirano

Padua-Algeria-Padua

Padova, 1943 – Giulio, third from the right, with the basketball team from Padova

An imperfect force is the force of those who without any preparation,but only for merit of a gift of nature, achieve something

Seneca

When Giulio was growing up in Pirano, there was only one publictelephone. In order to use it, it was necessary to go to the postoffice. It was the only instrument available for locals wanting to

communicate with the rest of the world, and it was the only technological deviceof the beginning of the century.

Besides his passion for the sea and sail boats, Giulio was animated by anemerging strong passion for technology, so much so that in 1943, he moved toPadua to enroll in the University, in the Department of Electro-technicalEngineering that included also two courses on “weak currents” used intelecommunications. For the young Giulio the only existing telephone in Piranorepresented a small window open to the world. Even then he imagined a richerand more dynamic future in this world, where men could interact with increasingfrequency and facility. During these years, the seed that would bring him tobecome an innovator started to bloom. Giulio was aware of the fact that trueinnovation exists only when technological progress, together with cultural andsocial progress, reaches everyone and brings advantages to everyone.

The idea of innovation was crucial to Giulio. He was immediately captivated bythe fascination of research and development on which he was to devote all of

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his professional career. He was an innovator ahead of the knowledge that fantasyand imagination are just as important as knowledge. This knowledge must beexpanded, shared, studied in depth and, as the evolving of his life woulddemonstrate, put to work, transformed into an activity capable of running abusiness without weakening the attention towards research and development.The latter must be both constant and a source for new and continuingchallenges.After his first year at University, the bloody 2nd World War directly affectedGiulio’s life and the choices he would make. Istria was on the front line foughtover by Slavs and Germans, but still Italian. Giulio’s decision to enrol in the Italianarmy was an important one for him. It was a decision that he still remembers asone of the most difficult moments of his life. It was not at all easy during thatturbulent time for a young man to decide which side was the right side tosupport, but being Istrian he had every reason to do his part to keep Istria Italian.He spent just over two years in the services. Giulio was assigned to the DecimaMas division. He fought in operations behind enemy lines earning a silver medalfor military valor. Halfway through 1944 he was taken prisoner by the Britisharmy and taken to a Prisoner Of War camp in Algeria where he stayed for twoyears. “ My two years in prison were very hard, but the English always behaved

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Padova, 1940 – Giulio, in the center, during a sports demonstration

well”, he recalls. “From that experience I picked up some English, fundamentaltoday in international relations.Added to the fact that in Istria we only spoke theVenetian dialect and that at school we were only taught German, today I knowthree languages besides Italian.”When he was in the hands of the British, Giulio was only 19 years old. Theperiod of his imprisonment remains one of the most difficult times of his life. Hewas not only deprived of his freedom but he was also oblivious to events thatwhere changing the world, events that he learned about only after his liberationand return to his homeland. His return, in the end, was thanks to the Britishforces, given the blindness of the Italian government at that time. This explainedwhy he stayed in the Prisoner of War camp for an extra year after the warended.Once freed, he returned to Padua where he continued his studies. He graduatedwith a degree in Electro-technical Engineering in 1951 when he was twenty sixyears old.After this Giulio faced another important decision. He was consideringthe possibility of emigrating to Australia as an Istrian exile. But again destinywanted him to stay in Italy and he decided to attend a course in advancedstudies, a “master” as it would be called today, in telecommunications at thePolytechnic in Turin.

The University of Padua, selected by Giulio for his studies, is a campus with a longhistory, important and full of honors.The University, where Giulio lived the mostintense years of his education, has always focused much of its attention onscientific and technological subjects. It was founded in 1222 due to a massivetransfer of both students and departments from Bologna, and in a short time itbecame one of the most important centers of knowledge in Europe.Initially, juridical subjects were studied and then others were added to these suchas astronomy, dialectics, philosophy, grammar, medicine and rhetoric. Between theXV and the XVIII century important progress in the field of medicine and sciencewas made at the University of Padua.There was also progress made in the areasof astronomy and philosophy thanks to the open, multicultural and cosmopolitanenvironment assured by the farsighted politics of the Republic of Venice.Between 1592 and 1610, Galileo Galilei was in Padua. Galileo’s research boostedthe university’s reputation tremendously, and on June 25 1678 this campus wasthe first in history to grant a degree to a woman, Elena Lucrezia CorsaroPiscopia, who became Doctor in Philosophy.The historical summary of Padua University’s website, reads: “The University

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became an important benchmark even for the daily history of the city, duringthe insurrectionary revolts of February 1848 , and the Italian unification in 1861,when both students and professors directly participated. Later it earned apredominant role during world conflicts.The Chancellor Concetto Marchesi in1943 publicly invited the students to fight against Fascism, a plea that forced himto flee to Switzerland.The University of Padua was the only University in Italy tobe decorated with the gold medal of military honor rewarded for its activitiesin favor of liberation from the Nazi – Fascist rule. Starting from the second post-war, the University incremented its own contribution to the development andcollaboration with scientific organizations on an international level, to whichduring the 90’s it added a remarkable expansion on a regional level, with thecreation of new detached branches that offer numerous degree courses.”After the war, Italy experienced a great economic boom. The country was in aphase of development never experienced before in its history. All of itsresources were concentrated towards that goal and so obviously specializedengineers in emerging sectors like electro-technics were a precious asset for thecountry’s economy. If Giulio had departed for Australia he would have becomea victim of the phenomena that today we define as “the fleeing of brains.”Thisrepresents a problem that shouldn’t be underestimated considering that Italy hasvery high profile capacities. Often however these capacities lack the possibilityto be fulfilled due to the fact that the research and development are still very

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padova, 1949 – Giulio, in the second row, with his team mates

weak since they receive too little attention both from the institutional world andthe economic and entrepreneurial class, even though important steps aheadhave been made in recent years.What is needed now is exactly what happenedduring the years of the economic boom, that is a new season of developmentbuilt around the central points of research and innovation. Something has begunto move in that direction, generating and rising from the bottom, from the desireof young researchers who transform themselves into businessmen, from themost farsighted Universities that understand the importance of transferringtechnology away from local institutions. But there is still a lot to be done. In thiscontext examples of success that combine vision and entrepreneurial ability arevery important, just like the one about to be told: the story of Giulio and Aethra.

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Padova, 1941 – Giulio on the day of his degree in Electronic Engineering at the University ofPadova

Turin

A mutual love between the teacher and the pupil is the most important step towards knowledge

Erasmus of Rotterdam

“It was not easy to decide to move to Turin because, at that time, refugeesfrom Dalmatia and Giulia were looked upon badly by the Italian LeftWing movements, who thought they had abandoned an area which was

already part of the communist Yugoslavia and this had seemed like a sort ofexodus of fascist groups.Istrian refugees (approximately 350,000 people) traveled on livestock-wagons insearch of a new destination and, in several towns, were not even allowed toleave the train they were on.For these reasons,Australia seemed like a hospitable and safe destination, a placewhere a new future could begin. I had relatives there who were waiting for mebut the desire to remain in Italy was strong”

His master’s degree in Turin was supposed to make it easier for him to get aposition in a company whose main business was the development oftelecommunication devices. So it was, and Giulio moved once more, this time toMilan.

During the eight months spent in Turin, Giulio dedicated almost all of his leisuretime to practicing sports. “Every Saturday night I would play with the amateurbasketball team, on Sunday morning I would play volley-ball in the second

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division and on Sunday evening soccer in the first division.” His passion for sportis still strong and in fact he’s the current President of the Organization ofPhysical Education Stamura in Ancona. The main focus of this structure is toattract young people to sport.

Every time he managed to get some time off work he would go back to Triesteto spend time with his family, especially with his brother and his sister. Hisbrother also moved several times, first to Udine, then to Codogno, near Milan,where he married Lina and had four daughters, Mirella, Giuseppina, Elena andTiziana.

At the time, Turin was going through a period of dynamic economic growth,thanks primarily to Fiat who had started to deal in telecommunications. Turinwas the heart of the economic boom at a moment when Italy was trying toregain a leading position in the world. Its industries attracted workers from thewhole country, and its automobile industry rapidly became the symbol of therebirth of the Italian economy. Now after 50 years Turin has overcome manyindustrial crises and is once more a dynamic city that has found a new drive,

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Turin, Fiat headquarters

counting on research and innovation, mainly in the telecommunications area.Turin, in fact, hosts many Research Centers, both state-owned and private, suchas the Polytechnic and the Mario Boella Institute, residence of Torino Wireless,one of the most active technology centers, and the Polo del Venture Capital,which uses both Italian and foreign funds and that has therefore brought backthe attention of venture capital investors to Italy.

Giulio was being trained for his masters at Sip (now Telecom Italia) and so itseemed that his career would naturally develop within the most importantnational telephone company. However, Giulio was offered a job by a very smallcompany in Milan that produced fairly innovative electrical devices.This was anopportunity, a challenge immensely more motivating and exciting than staying atSip until his retirement.And Giulio went for it.

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Turin, Piazza Castello

Milan

What you may think is the top is actually just a stepSeneca

Having signed his contract with Elit in 1952 Giulio moved to Milan. Hisexperience with this company was very brief, considering that in 1953he had already left for GTE, a company which was then called

Automatic Electric, known today, especially in the USA, by the name Verizon. Hewas employed as an engineer of relevance in the Department of Research andDevelopment.This is exactly what Engineer Guilio Viezzoli wanted to do and sohe devoted himself totally to the job, concentrating on research in the sector ofhigh frequency transmission apparatus, which was at that time considered thefrontier for development in the field of telecommunications.

At the beginning of the 1950’s, Milan was a city no less dynamic than Turin. Alsohere there was an economic boom in full expansion, and the city experiencedgrowth in both the industrial and tertiary sectors. The financial giants plantedtheir roots here, and sectors such as fashion and publicity found their idealheadquarters in Milan. People were talking about research and development butalso of marketing and internationalization. The majority of multinationalcompanies deciding to open a branch in Italy chose the area around Milan.

In Milan Giulio’s life revolved around his work, but he continued enjoying hispassions. Among these was his love for the theater. Years before, he had tried

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his hand as an amateur prose actor. This experience left him with a taste forexperimental performances, such as those put on stage in the Piccolo Teatro andDario Fo’s first appearances. But he also had an interest for other theaters andhe often attended the Scala. Once a week he played in a Bridge tournament andevery now and again went skiing, where in 1965 due to a fall he fractured a leg.Fortunately this injury healed perfectly and didn’t prevent him from practicingvarious sports in the following years.During the first years spent in Research and Development laboratories, Giuliodecided to enrich his professional experience, accepting to teach electronics tothe student electronic experts attending the last two years at the InstituteBeltrami of Milan. “I was really interested in this opportunity because itpermitted me to deepen my knowledge, which was limited to my degree inElectro-technical Engineering and widened by a masters in six months. For meit was an opportunity to develop my education with the continuity of a teachingthat required a real in depth study of the field I was working in in the company.I saw this as a fundamental experience that I faced with enthusiasm andcommitment. I will always remember those two years not only for what I havealready said, but also for my relationships with my students. These studentsattended their lessons after having worked all day. Lessons were from 6 pm to11pm every day, and a half day on Sundays. I set up the course in varioustrimesters, explaining and discussing the program for two and a half months, andthen examining in the last 15 days of the trimester, beginning with the beststudents so that the others could continue to prepare themselves for the exams.The first five in alphabetical order were Paolo Antoniazzi, Fabio Friundi, CarloMazzali, Aldo Montifiori, and Bruno Terreni. Fabio Friundi, speaking also for hisother four companions, reflects on his time spent at Aurelio Beltrami Radio-technical Institute.

“My memories of the institute date back to 1953, the year that my working careerbegan in telecommunications. I was only 15 years old. Listening to the advice of mysuperiors at work I enrolled in a radio engineering course.The only professional schoolavailable in Milan (and maybe in Italy) that every evening gathered young workersin the radio and television engineering area was “Aurelio Beltrami”, a private Institutelocated in via Circo 4 in the center of Milan. The course Director was Engineer A.Beltrami, the founder of the institute, who dedicated his very life and self to educatingthe youth in modern technologies from 1925 to 1967. For two years I attended theprofessional radio engineering course, where the subjects studied were electronics,

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radio engineering, vacuum technology and relative laboratories. The course kept mebusy every evening with five hours of lessons. It was the period of the crystal set, valveradio, the first television sets, and first germanium diodes, whose circuits were studiedand experimented during the interesting hours of laboratory. We studied bookschosen by the institute, written by our teachers themselves. In 1955, EngineerBeltrami succeeded in establishing a course for a diploma of an officially recognizedschool. It lasted five years and was the first course for a diploma in electronics in Italy.The course had two sessions, a day session and an evening session, both made upof thirty-five hours of lessons a week.The evening session, in which I enrolled, was verydemanding because it consisted of five hours every evening, five hours Saturdayafternoons and Sunday mornings.The hours needed to study were “stolen” from earlymorning sleep, from Sunday afternoons fun time, from the hours of a break at workand, when possible, from work with the help of understanding bosses. I must say thatthis activity never particularly tired me. The classes really interested me and myschool friends had substituted my old friends, since when I was not working I spentmost of my time in the Institute. The ambitious program of studies was verystimulating, even if very challenging. Besides the normal literary and technicalsubjects of a diploma course, it also included a wide range of technical subjects whichwere advanced for the times, such as radio engineering, telephony, television andvarious applications of electronics which included industrial electronics, medicalelectronics, nuclear electronics, analogical and digital calculators, and radar. Theteaching body was made up of, at least for the evening session, expert executives ofimportant companies in the electronic sector, such as C.G.E., Innocenti, Autelco,Siemens, etc., so that each area of study could be taught with maximumcompetence. For many subjects the level of education was similar to that of auniversity. Among the many professors that I had during the five years of the course,I recall with particular affection and gratitude: Dr. Miceli, the Italian teacher for myfirst three years for his capability of involving us and his great humanity; Engineer DeMarchi, Mechanical technology teacher, who followed us for all of the five yearsteaching us telecommunications and mechanics, for his strictness that made me“sweat so much” but taught me so much; Engineer Viezzoli, teacher of electronics forthe last two years, who, with patience and understanding helped us discover theemerging world of transistors, and taught us how to design new components. Thislast was an education, as far as I was concerned, that continued for another fouryears after my diploma, in the GTE laboratories.Making an irreverent comparison, I like to think that for me (or should I say for usconsidering that also my old school mates recognize the importance of that period

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for our working and non-working lives) Via Circo was “our Via Panisperna”.

Giulio adds, “In order to complete the picture I feel it is necessary to reflect onwhat Paolo Antoniazzi remembers concerning a period that certainly representsone of the fundamental moments in the beginning of the technological evolutionthat influenced telecommunications, that had remained stagnant for a century intelephonic transmissions and telegraph”.Paolo remembers “I began working in July 1955 at Siemens OCE in Crescenzago(MI). Before that, after middle school I had attended three years in the Siemensprofessional school that produced expert workers.With time, I realized that my workexperience was very useful. I was one of six children at home and I had chosen to geta job to help reduce family expenses, with the idea of attending a night school in thefuture. I worked in a test room where everyday we tested transformers and high powermotors, especially for electrical plants. I can still remember well that an importantclient back then was called SIP (Società Idroelettrica Piemontese - HydroelectricCompany of Piedmont) which later became the SIP telephone company.I liked the work and I could directly experiment aspects that were in line with mygreat interest for electronics (together with a young electro-technical engineer, I builta four inch oscilloscope to measure waveforms at 50 Hz). In the same year (1955)I enrolled in the first night course established in Italy. It lasted five years and was forElectronic Experts, held at the Beltrami Institute of Radio Engineering. We must

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Milan, 1953 – Students from the Aurelio Beltrami Radio-Technical Institute

remember that up until the beginning of the 1960’s institutes giving Degrees inElectronics did not exist in Italy. It was not easy to work until 5pm and then go toschool every evening from 6pm to 11pm (plus Saturday and Sunday mornings).Therewas little time left to sleep and to study. Often on Sunday afternoons three of uswould get together to do homework and talk electronics. Since I was 14 years old Ihad been reading Radio Electronics regularly, one of the few specific magazines thatreached Italy. After all, an interest for electronics and a certain vision for the futurehelped us a lot in overcoming the difficulties. I remember my professors well, alsobecause they, like us, expressed a great passion for electronics and technology.Almostall of them came from important companies in the field of radio-electronics and sohad great competence. One particular memory is of Engineer Viezzoli, an electronicsteacher during the last years of the course, not only for his teaching relative todesigning new components during the moment of transition from the valve to thetransistor, but for being a friend to us and maybe also a bit of a father during thisimportant phase of our life (we were only 20-25 years old). I also, just like FabioFriundo, had the advantage and the privilege of working for some years in a sectorwhere Engineer Viezzoli was in charge, in the Telecom laboratories of GTE.”

“After two years of teaching”, recalls Giulio, “I was still invited to be part of theboard of examiners for the exams to receive the diploma. So I attended themeetings to define the assignment of the term’s marks. In the October sessionone of the students had to repeat two exams. One of the school’s professorson the board wanted to fail the boy, who had attended the night school for fiveyears, because he did not know the prosthaphaeresis formulas of trigonometry.

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1962, Holiday in the snow with friends from Milan. Giulio is the1st from the left

The whole commission agreed with me on the explanation of the prosthaphaeresisformulas which I have never had the occasion to utilize in all of my experience. Sothey considered it acceptable to promote a boy who for five years had proven tobe dedicated and focused and whose maturity we had been called to evaluate.In the end, the commission approved his promotion and that was the end of myparticipation in teaching. It had definitely been a formative experience for me”.During his years in Milan Giulio devoted every week-end to sailing Gis, a smallboat of nine meters, purchased on Lake Como and whose previous owner wasa high prelate. Giulio decided to put it to sea, making La Spezia his base.“ Sailingteaches you to concentrate on the near and distant future, to be farsighted.Many of the things that you learn on a sailboat are also useful for governing anindustry, the fundamental strategic choices that are made during a sailing regattaand the strong competition find parallelism with the acceleration oftechnological development and with the markets that demand constantattention, exactly like the attention you need when you are at the helm duringa long regatta.”Giulio sailed around Italy to move Gis from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the AdriaticSea. He set sail with two others who disembarked along the way. By the timehe reached Reggio Calabria he was alone on board and alone he sailed all theway up to Trieste. It was 1964. This voyage let Giulio move the boat from LaSpezia to Trieste so that he could combine his passion for sailing with his visitsto his family who lived in the capital of the Friulian province. Furthermore,considering the condition of roads at the time, it was easier and quicker for him

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Trieste, 1964 – Giulio on his boat Gis with his sister Corinna and niece Bruna

to get to Trieste than to La Spezia, even simply to spend a week-end sailing.Giulio worked for GTE until March 31, 1966. He was continuously beingpromoted to higher and higher positions, until he became manager of researchand development for the high frequency transmission systems.Working for an America multinational company proved to be fundamental forGiulio’s training as a manager. He had daily contacts with research laboratoriesin the United States, where he often traveled: “Once I was in a restaurant inCalifornia and the waiter serving me discovered I was from Italy. He told me thathe was going to prepare a surprise at the end of my meal. It certainly was asurprise when he arrived with a mug full to the brim of espresso. It had takenhim ten minutes to fill it! He explained that the restaurant had got an espressomachine from Italy just the day before. It was a kind of mega espresso, that if Ihad drunk would have kept me awake for days. I showed the waiter how tomake espresso with the machine, maybe one of the first of its kind to arrive inthe USA.This was in the mid 50’s.”But the sea was calling him back: “During my time at GTE I developed manytalents and I learnt to manage employees. I had already managed to be promotedto the highest position I could have been given in the context, so that’s why I waslacking motivation to remain at GTE in Milan.Therefore I began to consider thenext step I should take and I began to look for a way to go back to the sea”.The sea, for Giulio, mainly meant sailboats, and the sailboat of his dreams was a14 meter named Aethra, like Theseus’ mother in the myth.In 1966 he was offered two positions: one with IBM, who wanted him in itsresearch laboratory located in Cote d’Azur, and another with La Farfisa, acompany that built musical instruments in the Province of Ancona. Bothcompanies were in coastal cities, albeit in different countries. Yet again Giuliochose Italy.This decision gave him the possibility to return to live on the shoresof the Adriatic Sea, his sea, the one he had known since he was a child, and theone on which he sailed with great joy and devotion.“ My father Giorgio taught me all about the sea and its winds. While sailing, heconveyed to me what he knew of the sea and above all of the Wind Rose.Thewinds are, beginning from the North: the Tramontana (the north wind), the Bora(north-north-east wind of the Adriatic Sea), the Levanter (east wind), theScirocco (south-east Mediterranean humid wind), the Auster (south wind), theLibeccio (south-west wind), the Ponente (west wind), the Mistral (north-westwind). Every wind has its own characteristics and influences the right directionto choose.That’s why I landed happily in Ancona alone.”

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Ancona

Ancona, 1st April 1966 – Giulio arrives in Ancona on Gis

Everything that someone can imagine,others can transform into reality

Jules Verne

On the first of April 1966, Giulio moored his sail boat at Ancona portand prepared for his new adventure. “ When I docked on the pier ofAncona, at the Circolo Velico of SEF Stamura, I met Lamberto

Giampieri. He was in charge of the organization of sport sailing and from thatday he became my reference for all my sailing activities.

“Ancona reminded me of my relatives because when they returned from thatcity, sailing across the Adriatic on their “trabacolo” (a sailboat with two maststypical of Istria) they bought home with them a pot of shellfish called “crocette,”I have never forgotten these episodes and it might have been because of themthat I preferred to choose Ancona over the Cote d’Azur. In Ancona, I wasimpressed by the people’s cordiality, probably because I was accustomed to largecities where everything moves so much more quickly.” Giulio immediately fell inlove with the capital city of the Marche region and immediately started to lookfor a house. After spending only two months in a hotel in Camerano hemanaged to find one that he liked a lot.

Farfisa, the company that employed him, was very important in the area andvery well known on the market. More than 1,500 people worked for thecompany, about 20 of whom concentrated exclusively on designing. Giulio was

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immediately faced with the target of developing its Research Department, andsoon the number of people involved in this increased up to 100. Among thesethere were also three engineers that had left Milan to follow Giulio: GiovanniPaolini, Carlo Lucarelli, Marco Bergamini.

Once in Ancona Giulio not only brought Gis to port, but after six months alsosailed full wind into marriage with Elisabetta.This was a very short period of timeconsidering that during his 15 years spent in Milan no other girl had managedto convince him to pull in the sails.“Our task was, on one hand, to develop electronic devices for musicalinstruments and, on the other, to evaluate the process of diversification towardsthe telecommunications market.”It was an innovative idea and certainly a challenging project, but Farfisa’s declinewas just around the corner due to Japanese competition. It was the beginningof the 1970’s and the Italian market of electronical musical instruments wasstarting to become a territory to be conquered by producers from the land ofthe rising sun. Farfisa suffered a blow and, instead of accelerating its specializationtowards telecommunications, decided to downsize, laying off 150 people, 70 ofwhom were working in Giulio’s Research and Development Department. It wasan unwise move. The company should, on the contrary, have increased itsinvestments to speed up development in the telecommunications sector, as hadbeen anticipated in the plan. It seemed absurd to Giulio, however, with his usualoptimism he felt that it was time for him to change direction again. Giulio hadmany innovative ideas and there were so many projects that he longed todevelop.And so it was the moment for him to end a professional high tech careerpursued in companies. Once more destiny confronted him with a difficultdecision. He had no doubt. It was time to set off on his journey as anentrepreneur, and he plunged forward with the full support of his wife Elisabetta.He knew the dynamics and productive capacity of the Marche. He knew that hecould count on this to achieve his innovative projects. So he made an additionto his family, and to his sailing.Although this hadn’t been expected, Giulio realizedit was necessary, and so was born a new company - ‘Aethra’. This was not onlya mythological Greek name but also the name of a magnificent sail boatanchored in the Laguna in Venice.

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Elisabetta, the Family

Trieste, 28th December 1966 – Giulio and Elisabetta on the day of their wedding in thecathedral in Trieste, San Giusto

“Without a wife at his side man cannot perfect his valor”

Ludovico Ariosto

Once in Ancona, having returned to live by the sea, and more specificallythe Adriatic Sea, Giulio didn’t seem to be thinking it was time to starta family. His life was filled by the gratification he received from his

work and the respect and friendship of his collaborators and the “boat”.The planning dept. of Farfisa had to grow. It had to become an important coreand he had to launch the company forcefully into the field of telecommunications.Back in 1966, Farfisa was an important company and the Chief Executive had asecretarial staff composed of young and efficient women who spoke foreignlanguages and had strong personalities.Among these women was Elisabetta, whoat the time was twenty-five. She immediately sensed that between her and thenew director of Research and Development there was a special attraction, notonly physical, but also made of trust, respect and admiration for Giulio’s vastknowledge. She felt protected but above all felt an attraction that has been veryimportant ever since the beginning. “It is wonderful to find a companion who youcan always be yourself with and never have to pretend”. Elisabetta understood thatGiulio was the man she wanted to build a life with. At dinner, one evening inSeptember, only five months after Giulio’s arrival in Ancona, Elisabetta askedGiulio to marry her. Giulio accepted and they set the date of the wedding for theend of December in Trieste. Only nine months had gone by since Giulio’s arrival

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in Ancona, but Giulio’s life had been completely transformed.They decided on Trieste for the wedding because Giulio’s mother was elderly andalso because it would have been very difficult to organize a wedding in Anconaat such short notice. Elisabetta wanted a small private wedding.Thinking back, shenow believes that the wedding day should be celebrated with friends and thepeople that are dear: not with pomp but to share the joy with others.“We got married in the Cathedral of San Giusto in Trieste on December 28,1966”,Elisabetta recalls. “There were only a few of us, about 40 between friends andrelatives.That afternoon we left to go on honeymoon to Portorose, just a short distancefrom Pirano, to relive the places dear to Giulio, the places he had been forced toabandon.We only stayed a week because Giulio could not stay away from work anylonger. With his usual optimism he thought we could have made up for it at a latertime.This wasn’t possible, even though, over the years we have done a lot of traveling.What isn’t done at any particular moment, for any particular reason, can’t be redonelater on.The atmosphere is not the same, it is a different moment of your life so it isnot the same thing. These are things you learn with experience, and from theseexperiences we obtain the wisdom we try to transmit to the younger generation.”Elisabetta stopped working fifteen days before the wedding for two reasons. Inthe sixties, if a husband could support his family financially, a woman generally

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Trieste, 1966 – Giulio and Elisabetta signing the wedding register

stayed at home to run the household and raise the children, if you had the goodfortune to have them. Furthermore, in Elisabetta’s case it would have beeninconvenient for her to stay on the director’s secretarial staff with Giulio in theposition of Director. It would have been a clash of interests.“When we got back from our honeymoon, I had to come to terms with the everydayreality of the work of a housewife. I knew nothing about this type of work. I had nevercooked, never cleaned, never ironed before. It was a bit of a challenge and it was alsoexciting to learn so many small and important new jobs, like discovering where tostart when ironing a shirt, cooking a sauce or Istrian dishes.The days flew by, alreadyexpecting our first little Viezzoli, born September 24,1967, exactly nine months afterour wedding. If he had been born at seven months, no one would have believed usand would have though that ours was a shotgun wedding.Things were so much moredifferent than they are today.”Marco was born September 11, 1968.The two babies were born at an interval ofonly eleven and a half months, “but it was beautiful having them so close. It was a bittiring, but the difference between having one small baby and two didn’t double thework. Nonetheless I had to be at home. As a mother you have to respect the schedules,you have to think first of the family and then if you have a little time for yourself.”Giulio continued to be very busy at work and Elisabetta still allowed him tocontinue his sailing, even though there were two small children. “It would have

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Ancona, 1969 – Elisabetta and Giorgio at SEF Stamura

been silly for both of us to stay at home! They were still too small to take on theboat.” 1969 was the year to launch the new boat, a 12 meter, built in a shipyardin Trieste and named Pan II after his father’s boat, the one he had grown up onand where he had become a sailor.In 1970 Farfisa abruptly changed its management and strategy and, once sold toan American company, cut off investment in telecommunication. Giulio’s officewas dismembered and he started wondering if it made sense to remain workingthere without any sort of future expectation, if not just for the vicinity of the sea.Meanwhile, the family was growing, and in March 1971 Elena was born. “At thetime there was no way of knowing what the baby’s sex was before birth, sinceultrasound scans did not exist. Although Giulio claimed not to care whether the childwould be a third boy, he later admitted that it really wasn’t so. Finally a beautiful babygirl was born and, notoriously, fathers have a particular feeling for girls. Anyhow, I stillremember the night Elena was born. Giulio was outside the delivery room, in thisprivate clinic, talking about boats with the gynecologist. Luckily the obstetrician wasvery good. She had helped me with my other two children.When Elena was born sheweighed only 2.6 kilograms. The day after delivery, without consulting the doctor orthe clinic itself, I asked Giulio to take me home because I had found a cockroach inmy room. So we left without telling anyone, which of course wasn’t allowed. But mylittle baby-girl needed to be in a sterile environment, or, at least, in a clean one.”

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Ancona, 1970 – Elisabetta with Giorgio and Marco on the boat at Stamura

With three children and a job that was no longer what it was supposed to be,Giulio had an important decision to make: to move back to Milan or to stay andstart his own company.The only financial thing that they could count on was Giulio’s severance pay, butElisabetta did not hesitate to start the adventure as an entrepreneur.The company was called Aethra, after Theseus’ mother, and also the name of themagnificent sailboat that Giulio would have liked to have but could not thenafford.This name was so unusual that there was no need to search the marketto verify that there were no other Aethras operating in the same field. Moreover,it was a name of good omen because even today in Greek nautical bulletinsAethra forecasts “favorable winds for navigation”.Elisabetta is aware that Giulio is an extraordinary and reliable man. “There havenever been problems between us, we have always made important decisionstogether. It was always my duty to manage the everyday family life. Nowadays inmodern families, even the smallest decisions are made by both parents together,instead we were organized differently.I stopped working to be with my family everyday. It was a challenging, rewarding andjoyful duty, since our first three children were born in a lapse of three and a half years.

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Ancona 1974 – Giulio, Elisabetta, Marco, Giorgio and the crew of Histria Rossa during anaward ceremony

Giulio was only involved in important decisions. He provided for the family with hiswork and was not absorbed by the daily routine. After we had decided to becomeentrepreneurs I helped Giulio, even though the children were still little, but we werealways prepared and ready to deal with whatever life threw at us”.The building blocks of the rising company were those of the value of humanresources and the ability of giving life to the concept of a network business. HereGiulio proved once again to be a pioneer, relocating the production and makingagreements with companies in the area. The structure had to be flexible,considering that there could be no control over a continuity of orders, and thatit was a fairly new kind of company, in spite of Giulio Viezzoli being rather wellknown in the telecommunication business and the help this could give.“During this phase, my role as a mother was always my priority. Giulio likes to saythat I am a lioness, always energetic and ready to defend my children. However, I wasable to participate in the life of the company, facilitated by the fact that our homehas always been situated above the company headquarters. I managed theAdministration of Aethra, with the help of consultants, also since characteristically Iam very precise and very good at finding errors- perhaps too good! On the contrary,I have no preparation in finding solutions. I studied Languages and not Business.Wetherefore decided to launch our Start-up in the world of telecommunications, awareof the fact that if we failed we would have to return to a large city far from the sea”.“We started with a small nucleus, and in 1972, with the funds that we received after

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Ancona 1976 – Elena at the helm of Histria Rossa

the earthquake, built the first 5,000 meters of the current office”.Elisabetta would work in the mornings when the children were at school. Shemanaged both her roles well. She used to take the children to school and thenwork until they came home. And then there was sport, homework, friends. Itwas a hectic, full of engagements, but yet a serene life in a close-knit family.Elisabetta also recalls with pleasure the birth of the twin girls. “In September1978, when Giulio was at a regatta in Sardinia, I took a test and discovered I waspregnant again. I told Giorgio, Marco and Elena, who at the time were between theages of 11 and 8, that there would soon be a new baby.They blackmailed me andasked for a puppy in exchange for their cooperation. We bought a Dalmatian, thefirst in a long series; we have had up to 5 dogs at the same time.The children heard the news before Giulio.When he called home that evening, Elenaanswered the phone and told him and he celebrated with the crew on the boat. Ionly discovered I was expecting twins 5 months into the pregnancy. Returning homefrom the ultrasound check, I held up two fingers – my middle and index fingers – totell Giulio I was actually pregnant with twins. However, from a distance Giuliointerpreted the sign as a victory for his sailing. It was a marvelous surprise and alsoan advantage since the new baby, being so far apart in age from the other children,would have felt like an only child.”At this time, Giulio was taking part in many regattas, including the regattas ofBocche in Sardinia. For these occasions the whole family would follow him.

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Ancona, 1982 – Laura and Giulia, aged three, at a family wedding

“Only once did I leave the children home alone with Giulio” says Elisabetta, “andwhen I returned home I found Giulio napping on the couch and the children had doneeverything they possibly could. Without being watched over they had made acomplete mess of the living room.We have been very lucky in our life. All of our children have grown up well and havegiven us reasons to be proud.They have all completed their education, and all haveuniversity degrees: Giorgio in Engineering, Marco in Business, Elena with an Artsdegree, Giulia in Social Studies, Laura in the Department of Art, Music andEntertainment. They have also been intensely involved in sports and I believe this isan important factor in the shaping of a youth’s personality. In this area, Giulio wastheir first sponsor and always accompanied the children to their games. Elenareached a very high level in tennis and became a member of the junior nationalteam. She had to choose what to do with her life, to play tennis and put everythingelse in second place or abandon competitive sports and go back to school. She madeher decision and continued playing just for pleasure. The ‘little ones’ (we still call thetwins that way in our family), have also done various sports, from swimming to tennis.But they decided to dedicate their free time after completing their studies to theScouts.They are both Head Scouts. Giulia also did a year of volunteer work then wenton to studying mosaic in Ravenna and now she has started her own business in thisfield. Laura instead is occupied in the world of movie-making, in directing and editing.It has been wonderful having such a large family, even if we are often far apart andin different parts of the world. Even so, for years we have spent Christmas together

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Roma, 1997 – Elisabetta and Giulio on the day Giulio was awarded with a Knighthood of Labor

and occasionally, whenever possible, Easter too, going on a trip where we were alltogether with our children and their children.We have so many marvelous memoriesand photograph albums”.As the years went by, Elisabetta became more and more absorbed in her workat Aethra, and not only worked mornings but the whole day, also because shehas had the fortune to have help at home. “We’ve had the same house keeperBelen, from the Philippines, for exactly 25 years”. Elisabetta wonders how difficulta woman’s life is today, working, trying to raise and educate the children andmanage a home.“Sooner or later, once we women have demonstrated that we are capable, and thesecapabilities have been acknowledged, we must step back because someone needsto be near the children. Do not leave them with others the whole time, enjoy raisingthem and helping them when they need advice from us parents. It is not to be takenfor granted that it’s us women who stay home, but someone must be available.”Now Giulio and Elisabetta have reached the age where their children are adults,and they spend their time with their grandchildren and dedicate time to socialactivities. It is possible to stop working without getting bored by dedicating lots oftime to people who are all alone. “Ours has been a very beautiful life because Giuliois a wonderful husband.Above all, we must always remember that in the union of twopeople, each should give without expecting anything in return, because this is love“.

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Ancona, 27th February 2004 – Elisabetta and Giulio on Elisabetta’s birthday

Giorgio, Marco, Elena,Giulia and Laura

Love for your parents is the foundation of all virtuesCicero

Giulio and Elisabetta’s three oldest children grew breathing the life of thecompany everyday. For them it was as clear as day that once adultsthey would become part of the business management of the family

company. Over the years Aethra had expanded from national to internationaldimensions. The first son Giorgio is an Electronic Engineer with a masters inTelecommunications like his father, and he is the only one who lives away fromAncona, forced by his work .After his master’s degree, Giorgio moved to Miamiin the United States where he founded Aethra Inc. for the development of theNorth and South American markets with videocommunication andtelecommunication products. As well as this activity, Giorgio is engaged in theresearch and acquisition of complex components with the right characteristicsfor systems and devices that are designed in Ancona. Giorgio is married toJessica and they have two children called Paola and Nicolò.Giorgio says, “I have been very lucky to have a father with such a great passion forboats, and to live in a seaside city. Almost every weekend for ten/fifteen years weused to take part in regattas on the Adriatic Sea, from Venice to Bari, in Yugoslaviaand sometimes the Mediterranean (definitely more challenging, but also muchfurther away).Apart from being a great helmsman with great experience, my father managed tohave very competitive boats, one of which was almost invincible: The Histria

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Almagores, bought from a ship owner in Naples.I remember that on that boat, for 3 or 4 years, we won wherever we went.We werereally strong and winning had almost become boring. My passion for the sea and forsailing has definitely been a fixed thing all my life, thanks to my father.This explainsmy decision to escape from Milan (smog and cement), after suffering there for awhole year to obtain my masters. I was lucky that Miami turned out to be the bestplace to start sales distribution of Aethra’s products in the Americas. Still today, withJessica and the children, we are looking for a city that is on the coast, where we cansettle down permanently. If there’s no sea, there’s just no way that we would move.My degree in Engineering and my experience in the market have allowed me toappreciate the real value of Aethra, to design and develop competitive solutions thatare placed on the market in a very short time, more quickly than the competitors,and with an excellent capacity to correct production.

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Ancona Univeristy, Engineering Department – Giorgio receiving his degree

It is quite obvious that these advantages derive from the highly skilled personnel inthe Research & Development Department and from their technological “know-how”.If the company did not have these it would be a mere distribution outlet. I believethat all this has been possible thanks to my father’s experience in Research &Development before he started Aethra. In fact, this has helped the company becomeinternationally renowned for the quality of its products.”

Marco, who is eleven months younger than Giorgio, became the Chief ExecutiveOfficer of Aethra in March 2005. He graduated in Business Studies from theUniversity of Ancona and, having completed his education with a master’s inBusiness Management in London, he began working for the company, putting allhis efforts in gaining more responsibilities year after year.He was initially in charge of the Financial area, but after one year he becameDirector of the Human Resources Department.In 1998 he became Manager of the Sales Department and later on wasnominated Director of Industrial Production. In this area, he held a fundamentalrole of responsibility and coordination between the logistics, production andpurchase departments, during a crucial moment in the company’s history. It was

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Ancona University, Economics Department . Marco on his graduation day surrounded byfriends

in fact during those years that Aethra started aggressively tackling theinternational market, beginning a process that would lead it to be present in oversixty-five countries over all the world. In 2003, precisely because of theconsistent worldwide growth of the company, Marco became the manager ofthe international marketing sector.In January 2004, he became part of the company’s Top Management and thenin March 2005 he took on the role of Chief Executive.“Dad’s happy that I chose to graduate in Business Studies”, says Marco with a smile,“because this way he can continue dedicating himself to what he loves most,everything related to research, development and engineering.”Marco married Daniela in 1997 and they have two boys.The first, Luca, was bornin 2001 and the second, Lorenzo, in 2004.Marco says “I have fantastic childhood memories. My big and very close family hasbeen facilitated by tranquillity and love for life. I’ve always had one passion which stilltoday affects my adult life, and that’s sport. Since I was six I have been mad aboutsoccer, Juventus, and sports in general. I always liked a healthy competition, numbers,

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Ancona, 1977 – Marco during tennis training

classifications, the Gazzetta dello Sport (Italian sports newspaper), the sun andwanting to have fun!I got all this passion for sports from my dad. He taught me the real values of sports,values that are connected to friendship, to fun, and to joy to be shared in victoriesand defeats. I was a good tennis player and got to play in the second division, but Ialso enjoyed playing for the local soccer team. Tennis and soccer are two verydifferent sports but yet have been very important in my training. Soccer is mainlyabout having fun, sharing and friendship, whereas playing tennis professionally taughtme a lot. It taught me how to concentrate and achieve isolation in crucial moments,it taught me that you cannot rely on anyone else but yourself, and it taught me toaccept defeats respecting the opposition, and to feel joy for victories.During all those years, my father followed me silently, therefore avoiding becoming anintrusive parental figure that often ruins all the fun for the adolescent. Playing sportsis supposed to be, above all, fun. I have only one regret, and that is that I have neverbeen able to share my father’s infinite passion for boats and sailing. It would havebeen fantastic... though I tried really hard. I took part in numerous competitions, butthe fact that I would easily get sea-sick has drawn me farther and farther fromsharing such a beautiful and authentic passion that is the sea! My parents alwaysleft me to make my decisions freely, nevertheless they gave me precious advice thatI only managed to understand too late, as is often the case... and this is the samething I’m trying to do with my two fantastic sons, Luca and Lorenzo. Among all theadvice and teachings, the one I’ll always have in my mind is “per aspera ad astra”,which translated from Latin means “through difficulties you will reach the stars”.Thisis an absolute truth that will always stay with me, together with another thing myfather used to tell me when I was a teenager: “you are unlucky because you are toolucky”.This saying of his always gave me the right push to make an effort, initially insports, but also later at university, work, and in everyday life” concludes Marco.

Instead, Elena started her own company in 2006, which she named Almagoresafter the sailboat with which Giulio won several regattas. Almagores was bornas a spin-off of Aethra and is concerned with direct and indirect sales both ofAethra’s products as well as other electronic components. The company hasother business partners besides Aethra. Elena has a degree in History from theUniversity of Bologna and almost a second degree in Languages. She is theglobetrotter of the family, having traveled a lot and having studied abroad forlong periods. She made her definitive return to Ancona in 2004 and in thecompany she manages marketing, human resources, information technology, and

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communication. She is also a member of the Board of Directors. “I have alwaysbeen going back and forth from Ancona, but the Company has always been part ofmy life. As a child I only had to walk down the stairs to be enveloped by this world.”Elena, like Marco, is a lover of sports. But neither Elena has inherited her father’spassion for sailing. Elena achieved an important level in tennis.

Elena says “Despite having numerous commitments, my father was always with mewhen I had a match, no matter where it was. He would support and comfort meenergetically.Whether I won or lost the game, he’d never put pressure on me.Whenthe result was negative he would take it as an excuse to talk about it, in order tofind solutions to do better in other games. Dad always gave me the possibility to havethe best trainers, the last being Leslie Hunt, an Australian women’s Champion, whowas among the top ten women’s tennis players for a long time. He also made itpossible for me to attend the most renowned tennis academies (Bollettieri TennisAcademy) and to study in Bologna so that I could do my training in the best schoolin Italy. He was happy to be able to offer me the best.Those were the most intenseand formative years of my life. Being a real sportsman, my father always understoodwhat a big sacrifice I was making and the amount of pressure I was putting onmyself, whether I was playing single, doubles, or a team-tournament.Therefore he wasalways comforting when I felt disappointed or whenever I had difficulties, and wasvery respectful of the choices I made that were always influencing my life.He was very proud to see me win, he would clap and cheer standing in the front row.He was close to me and his presence was important because it made me feel safe.I think that in return I gave him great satisfaction when I won important tournamentssuch as the Italian Championships, and when I became part of the national teamand represented Italy around the world.That’s why I felt his pain when I had to decidewhether to move to Australia to become a professional player, moving away from myfamily, my friends, and giving up my studies, or to leave tennis aside and focus on mystudies.With great grief, I opted for the second possibility, a decision shared by momand dad.I still remember the words he said then…they were so important, so true: “God gaveeach one of us certain rare talents. One of yours is definitely this, don’t let it go towaste…”. Sometimes I still think of what he said and try to imagine how my lifewould have been, had I taken his advice. But I am convinced that God has been verygenerous with me and has given me more than one talent and today my father canbe proud of what I chose that day so far back in time. One of the most importantlessons I have learnt from him is to always follow your passions, not only with words

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but also with your actions.Thank you, dad. You are an extraordinary man, an unlimited source of advice andteaching, a model of life which is impossible to emulate. All that I am today, I owe itto you and to mom!”.

Giulia showed she was attracted to nature from an early age, and she alsodesired to make herself useful. When she was eight she joined the Scouts, andthrough them she brought herself closer to nature and learnt the value ofservice and willingness and of human relations. She decided to go to Venezuela

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University of Bologna, Arts and Philiosophy Faculty . Elena during celebrations on hergraduation day

during her fourth year of high school thanks to one of the exchange programspromoted and managed by Intercultura. Apart from learning a new languagefluently, Giulia discovered a whole different world from the one she had alwayslived in. Back from South America she enrolled at the University of Bologna andbefore she had completed her academic career she decided to dedicate a yearto social services in her home town.This experience allowed her to see Anconaas she had never seen it, and to get in touch with people, realities and situationsthat otherwise would have remained unknown and distant from her. Her workin the shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic violence wasthe main focus of her dissertation in Social Studies. Having completed hereducation, she went on studying in the field of Arts, and so becoming aprofessional mosaicist in the School of Ravenna .

Just like her twin sister Giulia, Laura has been part of the Scouts since the ageof eight. From the scouts she has learnt a lot both on a personal level as regardsknowledge. She has always been keen on tennis, “the family sport”, dedicating alot of time and energy to it. Her other great passion has always been the moviebusiness and this led her to enroll in the Department of Art, Music andEntertainment at the University of Bologna. She continued her education inMilan at the Scuola del Documentario (Documentary School).This was a uniqueopportunity to focus on a type of production that is still not sufficiently knownand very seldom studied in Italy. Since then creative documentary has become

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Laura and Giulia on a scouts excursion

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Laura’s creative mania. She has already produced two and the third is in thepost-production phase.After her schooling Laura decided to remain in Milan where she currently workswith two college mates with whom she founded the Art Group, “Laphalda.”

Giulia and Laura say: “Dad is a man with great dreams and adventures. Ever sincewe were children, we’ve been immersed in his stories full of history and emotion: hisbeloved Istria, beautiful Pirano, his carefree college years in Padua, the war and thenthe exile, his sailing and his sea.When dad speaks of the sea his eyes light up, and whoever listens to his stories feelsas if they were right there, on his boat, with the sails up and the wind that neverstops. Our most intense memories we share with him are definitely ones of the timeswhen, still little girls, he would take us on his sailboat along the coast of the Coneroduring summer and spring weekends.Dad was always at the helm. He remained calm all the time and allowed us to keepour feet in the water when sailing close to the wind. The boat would be going fastand we would have a great time. When the boat was slow, if our older siblings felt

University of Bologna, Arts and Philosophy Faculty – Giulio graduating in Science ofEducation

like it, he would let us go in the water, provided that we held on to them and thenwe would all be dragged along by two ropes that were attached to the boat. For usit was great fun and pretty unusual, too. Because of his job and his little time, dadhardly ever sails now and we are really sorry about that. Yet the sea always remainsa metaphor for values and principles.Our father’s stories and his sea still invite us to be brave enough to let ourselves go,to experience the great adventure that life is, where all your dreams and your desiresmust be supported by preparation and knowledge, and also by a pinch of good luck.Dad used to take his whole family out to the sea because he knew it well. Before weleft, though, he would always study the weather and the winds. Challenge andchallenge yourself, but always with competence: this is a very hard lesson we willalways be thankful for!”.

Univeristy of Bologna – Laura during her graduation presentation

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Sailing and Technology

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There is no secondMotto of the America’s Cup

As Giulio himself says, sailing is a form of education that allows people toenhance their ability to look forward. It has always been part of his life.It is therefore predictable that the sea and the wind are omnipresent,

even if on an unconscious level.Giulio had his first encounter with sailing when he was only five years-old. Hewas introduced to it by his father Giorgio who took him along during theirsummer vacations. His first experience was on the boat called Pan, the name ofthe Greek God of the forest and of the inner satellite of Planet Saturn. Pan washis first contact with the sport that would accompany Giulio throughout his life.Corinna tells a very significant story about Giulio’s passion for the sea.“In Portorose, in the hours of the day when dad wasn’t using the cutter Pan, Giuliowould sail it himself. He wasn’t even six at that time. My dad’s colleagues would say,‘when we see a white cap coming out of the deckhouse on Giorgio’s cutter, we knowthat it is Giulio”. This great passion he had forced him to confront the strengthand the complexity of the sea and of its winds. His cups and his trophies are thesign of the noble bond between mankind, the sea and the winds”

However, sailing has not always been his only sport. Giulio sums up his sportactivities, “In Turin, while attending my masters in Telecommunication, everySaturday night I would play in the basketball second division in defense and as

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playmaker, on Sunday morning I would participate as riser in volleyball matchesin the third division and in the afternoon I played inside-forward on a soccerteam in the first division. Back at the time, sport in Italy was still amateur and didnot require the preparation necessary now to participate in championships”.

Sailing continues to represent Giulio’s most important activity because itentered his DNA. “I have lost track of how many adventures I have had at sea.I will only hereby recall two that are particularly significant.There are two kindsof winds, one deriving from the difference in temperature between the earthand the sea, and the other from the difference in climatic pressure between twodifferent geographical areas. During the day, the earth becomes warmer andtherefore the warm air attracts the cooler air from the sea.Vice versa, when theearth’s temperature drops at night, the wind drops and changes direction goingfrom land towards the sea. Sometimes in a sailboat, especially at night, when thewind is blowing from land, a calm might follow.This means that a gust of wind isabout to arrive from another direction due to the drop in pressure. So you mustbe both quick and alert, since you only have a few minutes to pull in all the sailsin order to prevent the craft from being damaged by the gust of wind. Once the

1931-1941: Pan, Giorgio’s boat (Giulio’sfather)

1964-1970: Gis, the boat on which Giulio arrivedin Ancona

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gust of wind has risen you can pull up the sails again, paying attention to do thisslowly so that the boat can pick up its speed.

This climatic condition reminds me of an incident that had happened in the gulfof Trieste that I will never forget.We were in the middle of a regatta, it was night,and suddenly we felt the wind beginning to drop.We immediately lowered thesails expecting wind from a new direction, but it did not rise and the wind fromthe land picked up again. At night, it is particularly difficult to sense the directionand speed of the wind.When we felt the wind from the land, we pulled up thesails again thinking that the gust of wind would no longer rise. But after half anhour there was another calm, and we immediately lowered the sails once moreand waited another quarter of an hour. But the wind of pressure would notarrive. We wanted to be sure that we could raise the sails again, we had nodoubt that the wind was coming from the land, so we kept the sails hoisted butin a few seconds we were surprised by a strong wind blowing against us that didnot spare us. We instantly lowered the sails because the intensity of the gustswas so strong that we ran the risk of tearing them. Fortunately, it did not do anydamage but it was a real blow for me as an expert sailor, because I was certainthat a sudden wind of pressure would not rise anymore after two episodes of

1971-1974: Pan II, the first boat that Giulio had constructed in a shipbuilding yard in Trieste

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calm. I let myself be caught by surprise with my sails hoisted.The sea teaches usthat at times we feel certain of particular events whereas instead we mustalways be ready and adapt to change in every circumstance.

This was not the only occasion in which I have learned a lesson from the seaand wind. Sometimes over the years I took solitary trips on a sailboat. Inparticular, I recall 1964 when I departed with two companions to sail Gis fromLa Spezia to Trieste. My two companions on that trip disembarked later atReggio Calabria for family obligations, so I continued my journey around Italyalone. I have never been afraid of sailing alone due to the fact that I began sailingwhen I was five and I have learned to understand the sea well, however it isdifficult to get rest when you are alone on a sailboat. I did 24 hour “shifts”without ever sleeping, I seldom rested for any longer than six hours and alwayswith the sails lowered. One evening I was very tired and I was following theroute towards the Dalmatian coast with a favorable current that would haveallowed me to reach the island of Lesina the next morning.The boat was sailingsmoothly with the wind and the current favorable, and so I fell asleep. When Iwoke up it was three in the morning and I was surprised to see an island beforeme. I was afraid that the boat had taken the wrong course and that it had arrivedat the Tremiti Islands instead of Lesina. Not far off, I saw a rowing boat withfishermen on it. I was forced to ask them where I was, even though whoeversails a boat should always know exactly his location.They replied in the Italian-Dalmatian dialect, so I promptly understood that I was not at the Tremiti Islandsbut just a few miles from my final destination, so I was on the right route. Heremy humiliation was to be forced to ask a group of fishermen where I was.Besides this experience, I have never had problems sailing alone on a sailboat,on the contrary, the solitary moments lived in the middle of the sea have beenintense with emotions and meditation. I have learned to always look aheadbecause on a sailboat you can only consider what has just happened assomething valuable for the expansion of your experience.There isn’t time, youhave to concentrate on what is happening at the moment and what is going tohappen. For all of this I have to thank my father who introduced me to sailing. Ithas taught me to think quickly, always looking to the future, which is somethingthat has proven precious for my activity as an entrepreneur.”

Giulio’s journey around Italy finished in the port of Trieste on August 21, 1964,after 19 days of sailing.

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Two years later he took another important trip to the port of Ancona on Gis.Between 1966 and 1975 Giulio took part in numerous regattas on Pan II, the12- meter boat designed by an architect from Trieste and launched in 1968.

The Histria Rossa was launched in 1975. It was a 12- meter designed by RonHolland, with which Giulio participated in many regattas in the Tyrrhenian Sea,in Sardinia and in the Adriatic Sea, including three different editions of the“Barcolana”.

In 1984 it was Histria Bianca’s turn to be launched. It was much morecompetitive than Histria Rossa and it allowed Giulio achieve great results on anational and international level. “Now it’s important”, Giulio says, “to hear whatMassimo Cardinali, doctor and partner in many regattas, remembers. It was hisjob to regulate the sails to the wind”.

Massimo Cardinali tells us the adventures of Histria Rossa from 1975 to 1983.“It all started in the fall of 1975, when I was 23 and half-way through a Medicinedegree at the University of Ancona. I had had a little experience of sailing since I hadbeen playing for several years around the rocks in Palombina with a Flying Junior.Paolo Cori, who at the time took part in many regattas with 420’s and who I knewbecause he was the little brother of some friends at the beach, asked me if I’d liketo go out on a brand new 12-meter yacht that had just been bought by EngineerViezzoli, the owner of an electronic-supplies company in Collemarino.At first I was hesitant, scared by the unknown, but then decided to give it a try.Looking back, those were the most exciting years of my life.As soon as I was aboard, I realized I had never seen a winch before.The sheets andthe halyards were so many that the different colors were not enough to distinguishthem from one another. However, the rest of the crew, apart from Engineer GiulioViezzoli and Dr Angelo Corvetta, were not that much more experienced than I was.As I tell my story now, I will always refer to Giulio Viezzoli as to the Engineer. Thewhole crew, in fact, called him that and still today, after so many years of friendship,I hesitate to call him differently.Our worst rival, was GAP III. Its crew members were far more experienced than wewere, even though our Histria Rossa was invincible with our helmsman on light wind.On the other hand, when the wind picked up, blowing above 15-16 knots, we couldonly pull down the sails and this made the boat less efficient.In 1976, the year after our debut, we won the winter championship for 1st and 3rd

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class IOR.This victory made us so excited that the following year, in spring, we wouldfind the time to go out to sea on weekdays for training. Between the summer of1976 and the summer of 1978, we were at our best and won many regattas,managing to sail up to Trieste, which obviously filled the Engineer with joy.Our ship owner was convinced that we could dare a little more and booked a placefor our boat in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, for the Settimana delle Bocche in 1978.Only 4 or 5 of us left on the boat (the others came on the ferry) with plenty of foodsupplies. On August, 8th, 1978 we left the port of Ancona with great enthusiasm andwith a good Libeccio astern. Even though we’d have to cover 900 miles we only

1975-1983: Histris Rossa, the boat with which Giulio participated in his first important regattas

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stopped over in Bari and Crotone, and arrived in Porto Cervo, sailing only with thesails as the Engineer wanted (as long as our speed did not drop below 3 mph) everynight between 10 and 11 pm.All the regattas were great, with unusually scarce or moderate winds for the area,allowing us to achieve good results and to win the third place.Our stay in Porto Cervo was great fun. We visited the “spiaggia rosa” (pink beach)on the Island of Budelli. At the time you could still moor, and so we took a walk onthe island. Elisabetta joined us with the three kids.We arrived back at the port of Ancona on September 8th: We had lived exactly awhole month on the boat and had sailed for over 3000 miles.The following year (1979) we tried to repeat our experience in Sardinia, but

unfortunately due to less favourable weather conditions we were not as successful”.

Massimo Cardinali also remembers the period from 1984-1988 on board thenew Histria Bianca. “In those years we did many regattas in the Tyrrhenian Sealooking for challenging rivals.The first journey we took was in a lorry from Ancona to Chiavari, and then to Tolonewhere the Giraglia would start that year.The regatta was to end in Sanremo. GiorgioViezzoli and a friend of his were on board that year. The Giraglia was one of thequickest that year and the race finished in little more than 24 hours since we sailedwith the Maestrale astern from Tolone up to Giraglia’s Rock and then with theMaestrale abeam up until Sanremo.The boat was left in Cala Galera, in view of the possibility to go back for the winterchampionship in the Tyrrhenian and then the following June (1985- I suppose) for theItalian Championship in Capri.The Winter Championship in Cala Galera was a wonderful affair.We left Ancona onFriday afternoon in a van big enough for crew members and for the sails. At sunsetwe were at Lake Trasimeno and by 11 pm or midnight we were in Orbetello.Our rooms in the hotel were for four-five people, thus promising to be great fun. OnSaturday and Sunday we participated in the regattas then after eating all togetherand Sunday afternoon we left to go back, tired, yet satisfied.The post regatta dinner was always a very fulfilling moment, even though I onlymention it at the end of my story. It always had the same characteristics. The crewwas tired, more or less satisfied, and very hungry. Every member of the teamremembered the most significant moments and the mistakes they made, while theEngineer was constantly picking at bread-crumbs on the table-cloth.This image is soprecious to me I will always carry it in my heart.

My time on board with the Engineer ended in 1986 when I began my job at thehospital and often had to work Saturdays and Sundays, so keeping me further andfurther away from sailing to the point that I was never able to board Almagores.“Thank you again, Engineer”.

In 1989 there was a new boat named ‘Almagores’. It had won prestigiousregattas in Great Britain, among which Cowes in the Isle of Wight, and FastnetRock in Ireland.Giulio renamed it ‘Histria Almagores’ and used it in many regattas, until 2004.Since 1931 Giulio has had many boats to adventure with. From 1931 to 1943he used his father Giorgio’s ‘Pan’, from 1964-1970 ‘Gis’, from 1971 to 1974 ‘PanII’, from 1975 to 1983 ‘Histria Rossa, 1984-1988 ‘Histria Bianca’, from 1989 to2004 ‘Histria Almagores’. Today, Giulio continues to go sailing with an 8-meterboat called ‘Elisabetta’ to honor his wife who has been so patient for so many

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Histria Rossa (photo Carlo Ferruzzi)

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long years of sailing with Giulio.

The technologyIInn 11885511,, tthhee AAmmeerriiccaa’’ss cup, with a prize of 100 guineas, was established by anEnglish Admiral for a regatta around the Isle of Wight, with both the start andarrival being at West Cowes. “America” was the name of the American boatdesigned for the occasion after the kind, yet not so convincing, invitation sent outby the English Admiral to the newly-born New York Yacht Club which won thetrophy by being the first across the finishing line. It is funny to think the cup itselfis not a real cup since it is hollow, without a bottom. “America” was madeaccording to the innovative and courageous ideas of its designer, who chose touse the best materials provided by American technology of the time. Moreover,the boat also sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, proving to be not only a boatdesigned for regattas but also a reliable sailing boat at sea with a highly trainedcrew on board.Once back in the USA, the members of the producers’ association that ownedthe boat decided to donate the cup to their Yacht Club together with a letter,the Deed of Gift.This letter obliged their Club to put the cup up as a prize everytime a foreign club challenged them. It also defined the rules of the competition.These original rules changed several times due to the fact that in case ofdisagreement with the challenger the club in possession of the cup, the“defender”, had the right to reformulate the regulations, and consequently todecide for its own convenience.Even the US Supreme Court had a say in the Cup, when after the II World Warit decided to allow 12-meter boats in the regattas.Every three or four years, boats from different nations raced to choose whowould challenge the defender, since after Cowes the regattas were always matchraces, but the cup never changed hands.That’s why Giulio took the challenge anddecided to enhance electronic features of ‘Azzurra’, the first Italian boat ever toparticipate in the America’s Cup at Newport, USA.

11998822--11998833 AAzzzzuurrrraa aanndd tthhee AAmmeerriiccaa’’ss CCuuppEnnio Angeloni, one of the first engineers to work with Giulio, says “Aethra’sadventure in the America’s Cup officially started in 1982 after a couple of meetingswith Nicola Sirione, an architect of the Vallicelli Office who had been chosen to design‘Azzurra’ by the Costa Smeralda Association.

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A few months earlier the Costa Smeralda Yacht Club had challenged the Americanclub, the defenders, who had again offered the cup as a prize for the year 1983. Itwas the first time an Italian club had participated. Meanwhile the American boatEnterprise had been bought and had already participated in selections for the“defender”. No one in Italy knew or had the proper experience with the 12-meterboats that were to be used following the America’s Cup regulations at the time.I’m telling you all of this just to make it clear that the challenge was rather hard andreckless, considering also that other countries were not capable of competing.To havea chance of winning it was necessary to have innovative ideas, top quality sailsmaterials, forefront equipment and a crew experienced in that specific kind ofregatta with direct match between two boats at a time.We were asked to design part of the on board equipment that would help thetactician and the helmsman to find the solution to one of the biggest problems onboard: communicating the boat’s position in respect to the “lay-line”.This becomes particularly important when sailing close to the wind, when the buoythat the boat is aiming for is in the wind’s direction. It is important to choose the rightangle so that the speed of the boat towards the buoy (VMG:Velocity Made Good) isthe most effective. This angle is a characteristic of the boat, but it also depends onmany factors such as wind speed.At this pace there are two imaginary theoretical lines, called lay lines.They both startfrom the buoy representing the final bowline and point towards the area of theregatta, on the side where the boats are sailing.It is strategically necessary that each boat remains within the limits of this angle,otherwise its route is not optimized. In practice, once the boat has hit the lay line itcan subsequently reach the buoy without tacking, since its direction is the same ofthe ideal angle traced by the wind’s direction.It is important to remind the younger generation that back then we did not havelaptops, and in any case it wouldn’t have been possible to take them on board aboat designed for regattas. Below deck, there was only room for the sails and forsupply equipment. Neither was there GPS satellite technology to locate the boat inrespect to the buoy.The area around Newport, like the greater part of the Mediterranean, was served bya positioning system, called Loran C, based on radio signals transmitted by on-landstations. With the right equipment, it was possible to weigh up the situation with aprecision of about ten meters and an updating frequency of over one minute. On theother hand the standard equipment was already very sophisticated. Technologyallowed for sensors for wind measurement, the boat’s velocity, and even for the

inclination of the boat and the measurement of the various adjustments on board.Acouple of companies built instruments that assured all of this information withreliability and precision, and one of these was B&G, a base at Lymington, oppositethe Isle of Wight. It was necessary to start from here in order to understand whatcould possibly be done.This is where we were when the story of the America’s Cup began for us.”

11998822 –– AAzzzzuurrrraa aanndd AAeetthhrraaEnnio Angeloni continues, “We came back from our meeting with B&G withinformation on how to come up with unprocessed navigation data from theequipment on board. This information needed to be defined in order to provide, atleast theoretically, an advanced support for whoever had to decide the tactics duringthe regatta. The crew’s training in Italy would have supplied a considerable amountof data concerning Azzurra’s performance in various wind conditions and dependingon the adjustments made to the equipment on board.This would have allowed us tolearn the characteristics of the boat better, so that we could draw up the calculationsof the lay line reliably. There was also the hope that we could provide the

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1984-1988: Histria Bianca, the boat following Histria Rossa which preceded HistriaAlmagores

fundamentally skeptical sailors with objective checks of the best way to conduct theboat. These sessions of telemetry were made possible by installing a modem onboard. This had been specifically built, connected to the core of the instruments onone side, and the audio of a transmitter on marine band on the other. On land, thereceiver demodulated the digital signal and transmitted it to a computer to registerdata such as velocity and wind direction, speed of the boat, adjustment of the mast,

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1989-2004: the sailing boat Almagores, that Giulio renamed Histria Almagores

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sails, and rudders.The idea of registering data utilizing telemetry proved to be good and reliable, butthere was not sufficient time to complete it and obtain practical results from it.”

11998833 –– NNeewwppoorrtt“In 1983, the cup was still in the hands of the New York Club”, continues Ennio, “butsince 1930 the area of the regatta was now the bay in front of Newport, in the stateof Rhode Island, a vacation spot for the rich families of New York and Boston. In June,Azzurra arrived in Newport, followed by a crew of young sailors guided by the skipperCino Ricci. Shortly after, the famous “computer” arrived ready to be installed on board.Italy was no less technologically equipped than the other contesting associations andcertainly no less than the super technological American defenders.The computer consisted of a container with a microprocessor board, a programwritten in basic, a keyboard to register the data about the position of the buoys, somealphanumeric LCD displays (colored graphic displays still didn’t exist), an interfacetowards the B&G equipment and another for the Loran-C receiver.The program wasperfected during the preliminary phase of practice, when the level of excitement hadnot yet reached its limit. In the end there was not even time to prepare a draft of acalculation of the famous lay lines or to have an idea of the level of accuracy thatcould have been reached with what means were available. Not even the Americansreached an acceptable reliability, so much so that the Cup was won by theAustralians.Just the same, in Newport there were some peculiar episodes, like that of a failureof the interface board with the equipment. The failure was discovered, and, veryfortunately, the chip was found in a tiny electronic components shop in Newport andsubstituted with a welder directly on board the Azzurra. We can’t say whether thiswas talent or good luck.Just for the record, Azzurra performed with dignity, considering that this was the firstexperience for an Italian team, and the preliminary heat among the contestants waswon by Australia II.After more than a century the Australians had managed to wrenchthe Cup from the New York Club. The dominating theme of this whole contest wasthe mysterious keel of Australia II, hidden from everyone’s view by tarpaulins allaround the boat, even when it was raised from the water in the port for its normaldaily maintenance. In the end, it was discovered that two wings had been attachedto the bulb to give hydrodynamic thrusts during certain paces.”

11998844--11998877 IIttaallyy aanndd AAeetthhrraaGiulio Viezzoli, expert sailor and electronic engineer, knew that on a boat theright equipment could make the difference and give the right contributionneeded to make the best decision.He studied and designed a system for data communication between the regattaboat and the support boat with the help of his collaborators, amongst whomwas Mauro D’Auria.He interfaced all the data coming from the sensors of the boat to the computeron board, opportunely delivering to the navigator all the information useful forthe skipper so he could optimize the choice of the boards.In December 1984, Giulio decided to sponsor America’s Cup again, this time forthe 1987 competition. He supplied all the equipment, systems, and a full-timetechnician for assistance. He appointed Mauro D’Auria.Aethra managed the supplies, the installation and the functioning of all theequipment and of the computer on board - a workstation Hewlett-Packard 200series. In this way, innovative solutions were made so that a normal officecomputer could function on a boat where copious amounts of water couldarrive any moment. Mauro D’Auria explains “They were not like the currentcomputers, that are also portable, but large calculators with separate hard disks andcpu’s and with cathode ray valve monitors of dimensions certainly not designed to beused on a sailboat in a regatta.The support boat, utilizing data transmission in “telemetry” received information inreal time that was gathered by an lcl minicomputer with a high-resolution, up to1280x1024 points per inch, a graphic processor that gave the highest levelperformance of the time.The data gathered was analyzed the next morning by the entire crew, who were thenable to optimize their own maneuvers in virtue of the boat’s performance.The equipment on board was supplied by Ockam in Milford (USA) who had someexpert sailors among their personnel. Furthermore, some very powerful software forthe analysis of the regattas was available, still widely used today. The real problem,however, lay in how to make all the equipment fully water-proof.The days really were very long.The wake-up call was at 6.30 in the morning and wenever made it back to base before 7.30 pm.”

11998855.. IIttaallyy aanndd AAeetthhrraa--SSaarrddiinniiaa.Mauro continues “Between March and June of 1985, the team of “Italia”, (thename of the Italian Consortium’s boat that took part in the America’s Cup, and which

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was antagonist to the Azzurra of the Costa Smeralda Yacht Club) practiced off thecoasts of California near Long Beach. From the English the Italian union had boughtthe Victory 83 boat that won the world championships at Porto Cervo in Sardinia.Black Magic, belonging to one of the US trade unions, acted as the pacemaker. Atthe helm was Rod Davis, who had won numerous Olympic gold medals.The skipperof ‘Italia’ was Lorenzo Bortolotti, and at the helm there was Flavio Scala.They went out on the sea everyday, resting only for four days out of the three months,to gather as much data as possible in every wind and sea condition.The data was repeatedly analyzed and verified before being stored in the cpu of theon board computer, and so became the reference criteria to reach, or if possible toimprove on, during the regattas. Occasionally Lowell North, the owner of North Sail(the sail factory that still today furnishes all boats participating in the America’s Cup),took part in the training, and gave his contribution to the team measuring theefficiency of the sails thanks to the pressure sensors of his invention, installed onRanda and Genoa. Remember that at the time it was not possible to simulate allthe conditions, so it was necessary to gather data directly on the field.During the period between June and October in 1985, the craft “Italia”, constructedtotally of aluminum and designed by the Giorgio-Magrini technical office, was

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Since 2005: Elisabetta, the small sailing boat which carries the name of Giulio’s wife

launched at Genoa and transferred to Porto Rotondo in Sardinia, where practice withthe pacemaker boat Victory 83 started. Giulio was there in person to follow the start-up and the launch day coincided with his birthday, 2nd August. Giulio also attendedthe reunions that included the skipper of “Italia” Lorenzo Bortolotti, the helmsmanFlavio Scala and navigator Matteo Plazzi, giving his contribution which resulted fromhis extensive experience as a sailor.The “Italia” boat did not seem to meet the team’s expectations, so in the Intermarineshipyard in Lerici, the construction of “Italia II” started. Like its predecessor this boatwas built in aluminum, designed by Mike Trimming.”

11998866.. IIttaallyy aanndd AAeetthhrraa--AAuussttrraalliiaa..Mario D’Auria recalls “Between November 1985 and May 1986, the team of “Italia”was transferred to Fremantle where preparations began for the two crafts to confronteach other so that they could choose the better one. Again, Aethra supplied all theequipment on board and all the components of information technology.The important work of gathering data and then analyzing it, a task made possible

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Histria Rossa

thanks to Aethra’s technology, allowed them to make the definite choice betweenJune and December 1986. “Italia I” was chosen to be the craft of the ItalianConsortium. In the preliminary regatta of the Louis Vuitton Cup the boat came in in7th place.This was a respectable result for a team participating for the first time inthe competition. Unfortunately, even the more titled cousins of Azzurra’s team did nobetter, hitting twelfth place.What the Aethra engineers succeeded in doing at the time by bringing computer andtelecommunication technologies on board an America’s Cup boat had somewhat ofa pioneering spirit about it. The sailors of those years still looked skeptically at theintroduction of equipment so sophisticated and delicate, designed for uses sodifferent, and thanks to Aethra the Italian boats were the best equipped.

Today the situation has changed a lot.The modern craft of the ACC (America’s CupClass) are all equipped with instruments and sensors that gather detailedinformation from the boat , the sails and the structure.They are also equipped withbidirectional telemetry which permits live dialog between the two boats that simulatea regatta. Furthermore, they have at least two computers on board and the navigatorhas a palmtop computer or a pulse computer so that he constantly has under controlall the data and information detected in real time. Only two limits remain, and theseare not of a technological nature, but imposed by the regulations during the officialregattas: the impossibility to use radar and to communicate outside of the boat.”

“This experience “remembers Giulio“ was also very interesting for me to realizehow a high and complex technology for sailing navigation is able to demonstrateyet again how the sea and the wind can lead to extremely complex analysis anddevelopments: Per aspera ad astra!”

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Aethra(PPhhaassee 11 – The Founding - 1972-1997)

Roma, 1997 – Giulio with the ex-president of the Republic, Hon. Oscar Luigi Scalfaro

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Fortune smiles on the audacious(Virgil)

I n 1971 collaboration with Farfisa came to an end. Giulio took his first steps,together with Elisabetta and other colleagues, towards the birth of Aethra. InGreek mythology Aethra is the name of the mother of the Greek hero,

Theseus, who had seven sisters, Ambrosia, Eudora, Pasitoe, Coronide, Polisso,Fileto and Dione who were transformed into stars, the Greek Hyades, by Zeus.For Giulio, Aethra represents the name of a magnificent sailboat that was oneof his greatest desires as a skipper.“Initially there were about ten of us technicians designing projects that werethen carried out by local companies.The necessity of having a flexible networkbusiness was motivated by the fact that we did not have a commercial or amarketing structure. Therefore we were not able to manage the programmingof products. Likewise, it was still impossible for us to plan the projects since wedid not know when the first orders would arrive”. Giulio explains.In the group there were recently graduated industrial experts, some of Giulio’scolleagues, and a newly graduated Engineer named Maurizio Giammarchi whohas never left the company he helped so much develop. Today Maurizio is incharge of Engineering activities and sits on the Board of Directors.Maurizio Giammarchi narrates his experience with Aethra in the world oftelecommunications: “When I met Engineer Giulio Viezzoli, I had only graduated inEngineering two months earlier from the Polytechnic in Milan. For a few weeks at the

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beginning of summer in 1974, I visited his young company to carry out a smallproject. I had the opportunity to meet the people who worked with the Engineer, andmoreover, the Engineer himself (we’ve always called him this, with a capital E), whowas always ready to give suggestions and advice. He used to say that, even if thecompany was still small, he wanted to begin designing and planning on his own,because doing things for others did not allow you to learn enough to grow and builda future.We separated at the end of July, when I had to leave to do compulsory militaryservice, with the understanding that upon my return I would begin working for him.This is how I began my experience at Aethra in September 1975.It was a favorable time. Many industrial and utility companies were beginning aprocess of computerization and the need for new apparatus to connect calculatorsand terminals through telephone lines (Data Transmission) was opening a wave ofdevelopment in the telecommunications sector, after a century of substantialimmobility.Technology was improving (even though compared with today’s it seemedprimitive), allowing companies, even small ones like Aethra, to achieve interesting

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results by the end of the 70’s, both from a technological and sales point of view. Theybegan to study products such as “Systems”, capable of interacting with thesurrounding world with a flexibility and a capability of adaptation which until thenhad been unthinkable.Another interesting aspect that was to our advantage at the time (even thoughduring the following years it proved to penalize us) was that the commercial activitywas limited to our connections with the then SIP (later Telecom Italia in 1994), whilethere were very few direct relations with the final client for designs and personalizedapparatus. Aethra therefore grew well from a technological and productive point ofview, but with little visibility and no presence on the international market.At the beginning it really was stimulating. In Italy there were very few of us whodeveloped projects with microprocessors. At the time these were rudimentarydevices, but already revolutionizing the way of conceiving products and defining theirperformance.The first products that I managed directly were Instruments and Systems ofmeasurement, where we gained experience facing the problems of telephone linesand systems of Data Transmission. This was certainly an excellent schooling. In themeantime, the Design group was growing, with the addition of new forces. In time,the results of our projects started to become important, and then fundamental forthe company’s sales revenue.The contribution of experience and professional growthdepending on the contracts with the Italian Telecommunications Company was adeciding factor. In this sector in Italy, up until the mid 90’s, there were organizationsof absolute excellence at a global level operating.There were many opportunities forcollaboration both on a personal level and a company level. For all of us theserepresented a “treasure” in terms of the development of technological culture andwork organization. Over the years this proved to be absolutely fundamental.In particular I remember the experience of a big project developed together withTelettra at the end of the 80s (a true world leader in Telecommunications before FIATsold it in 1990 to Alcatel, who couldn’t believe their luck at this opportunity anddeprived our country of such a reality).Apart from the honor we felt working together with designers in Vimercate (Milan),this job really brought our designers to a turning point.We learnt a lot and most ofall we realized what it really meant to design and produce Transmission Systemswhich are expected to be continuously functional, hour after hour, sometimes foryears, and for which reliability and resistance are essential characteristics.Besides the bigger companies, a network of smaller (but not less prepared) ones wasdeveloping. Of course, these companies were competitors, but nonetheless they

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collaborated as they shared the enthusiasm of working in a field full of expectationsand were probably still unaware of the difficult conditions that the market wouldexperience by the end of the 90’s.As time went by, new technology was being discovered.While in Aethra the first stepswere being taken in the field of Audio-conference and Video-communication, peoplewere starting to talk about a mass use of Numeric Transmission Technology, whichuntil then had been extremely expensive and so reserved for the big companies.ISDN, at the time an absolute novelty, was probably the first technology to beconceived and developed in ‘European’ terms for the residential market. It certainlywas not difficult to convince Engineer Viezzoli to take the risk. Starting from scratchwe enthusiastically designed some good products in one or two years. At that timeour collaboration with the Centro Studi Telecom Italia (CSELT, currently Telecom ItaliaLab) in Turin was fundamental. With them we managed to make a relationshipbased on the fact that we respected one another, and, despite all the changes thathave occurred since then, this collaboration has always continued.In fact, due to a series of circumstances, we ended up being the driver for thedevelopment of a device (the NT1 PLUS) which became a milestone in our history.Having agreed with the CSELT on the characteristics of this device, it became ourmain product.Thanks to the hard and committed work of the whole team, and havingcorrected some initial mistakes that had been made, the NT1 Plus was recognizedas the one product that could be considered the most functional and reliable.This device was essential for us for two reasons. We learnt to deal with massproduction, and we had a product suitable to sell abroad once the idea of the devicehad been accepted in the different countries. Our first foreign buyer was Spain, thenBelgium (where we had great difficulties in convincing a northern European buyerthat a small Italian company without references could be reliable; we were afterwardsawarded ‘best supplier of the year’ for two or three years running) and then Finland,Denmark, South America and the Eastern European countries, which started todevelop after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We consequently began to successfullycompete with famous companies and brands with international experience.However, a great change that caused radical transformations for us and for manyother Italian companies was just around the corner. In 2000 Telecom Italia wasprivatized (even if the State monopoly had not yet been fully over turned). In thespace of a few months technical and market relationships with companies such asAethra were completely modified, and even though we might have had acollaboration with Telecom Italia for decades, purchase volumes were drasticallyreduced in some cases.

It turned out to be crucial for us to have started selling abroad. If we had not started,we would have ended up like many other Italian companies, which disappeared in amatter of years, or became sales and distribution companies, practically giving up ondesign and production.Those years were really very hard. Many of the people we had frequent contacts withwere out of the picture, changing jobs or companies. It seemed as though thecommon network of relationships and acquaintances had suddenly become useless,and that an immediate profit was to be sought with very little attention to continuity,quality and future developments.The same road (if not a worse one) was followed by the newly born providers whowere mostly imitating the old provider’s steps, showing very little ability indifferentiating and therefore not managing to succeed.Many of the choices we made in that period proved to be at least partially correctand we became more aware of the fact that the presence of flexible and active

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businesses like Aethra was a real competitive incentive for other challengers.From a technological point of view, another revolution was about to take place. Thisrevolution was the use of broad band which allowed people to use more and moreadvanced contents on the Internet from their homes.We took part in meetings wherethe characteristics of these transmission systems were defined, hence becomingmembers and actively participating in sessions of the international standardizationboards.At the same time, competition started to arise from the Far East, which rapidlyoccupied the market of mass productionHaving tried to compete on the broad band residential market, Aethra chose adifferent direction, making the most of its experience, product quality, and the supportit could offer its partners. At the beginning of the millennium we began producingdevices which, using the most recent broad band technology (ADSL,ShDSL, VDSL),were designed for “professional” users. In developing these products, renewedcontacts and relationships with Italian and European telecommunications providerswere crucial after the interruption that had occurred in the previous years.We did not lose hope and, although we had very little experience with thistechnology, we called new designers to join our team and managed to create a lineof products which still plays a major role in our economy.This was definitely a successful decision, since this market niche has begun developingin the past five to six years, thanks to the so-called “convergence”, i.e. the unification ofthe Data,Audio and Video Transmission, which has spread throughout the whole worldof professional use in small medium businesses.Even though it does not have the volumes of the mass home-supply market, this sectoris very interesting both for its specialization and for certain entrance barriers that keepit less “crowded” and not as accessible to competition coming from the Far East.”

In 1971 and 1972 Italy began to bring into effect the first Data Transmissions. Itwas a moment of significant change for the world of Telecommunications, whereduring the previous one hundred years there had only been Telephony andTelegraphy. Giulio and his small group of technicians looked to the future anddecided to work on the development of an innovative device, a tester, thatallowed the efficiency and the capacity of lines for Data Transmission to bemeasured. This choice proved to be positively strategic not only because themarket requested this type of device, but also because the team concentratingon this kind of technology began to study, know, and understand the complexityof data transmission and so also began acquiring a very high level of

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competence.“It was an emerging field and well suited for a company the size ofAethra at that time.The first product was an immediate success on the market.The first clients were the companies that installed infrastructures, and Sip (thestate national telecom company).” Giulio remembers.Aethra moved forward in the wind, business was good and the group came upwith new data apparatus for the analogical networks. In brief, the innovativecapability expressed by Giulio’s group was the reference point for theconsolidation of commercial relations with the national telephone company,which possessed the market’s monopoly. Sip, this was the name of the ItalianCompany for Telecommunications until 1994 (an acronym of the HydroelectricCompany of Piedmont, that later became the Italian Company for themanagement of telephone communication, and then the Italian Company for theManagement of Telecommunications) became its main client.Also the name Aethra proved to be a wise choice simply because of its place inthe alphabet. “We soon noticed that in whatever event we took part, Aethrawas always on the top of the list.” recalls Giulio.With the amount of work and number of products increasing it was alsonecessary to expand the company in terms of personnel and ability. Right fromthe beginning the Research and Development department was fundamental toAethra’s economy, not only because Giulio has research and development in hisDNA, but mostly because it was vital to concentrate on technology foranalogical transmission lines, which, at that time, operated at one or maximumtwo kilobits a second.In addition to the advent of the data transmission era, two other eventsconcurred towards the development of Aethra, officially established inDecember 1972. One was the reconstruction of Ancona after the earthquakethat hit the area in 1972.This terrible earthquake reached the 10th degree ofthe Mercalli scale and caused enormous damage to all the buildings andinfrastructures, but fortunately caused few victims. The Italian governmentallocated funds for the reconstruction of the city and the emerging companyAethra also received compensation funds for damages caused by the quake.The third element that contributed to the enrichment of the fertile soil whereAethra set its roots coincided with the birth of the Faculty of ElectronicEngineering at the University of Ancona, between 1969 and 1970. For Aethrathis did not only mean having a source of engineering talent at hand to insertinto the company, but it also found itself as a high-tech company in a culturallyfertile environment open to innovation.

These are three coincidences that Giulio recalls and narrates when he speaksabout the origin of Aethra to underline how initiative, vision, intuition, and willpower must also be accompanied by a favorable wind in order to sustain a newenterprise so that it can grow and be successful.“Young people with talent werenot hard to find, but back then there were other important companies in thearea, in particular Merloni, that were hunting for new talent”. The decisiveelement was, however, the “skipper’s” intuition of knowing to read the signswhich indicated how the Telecommunications was quickly moving towards anew season of development to coincide with the rapid expansion of DataTransmission.So in 1976 Aethra settled for good, fixing its headquarters in Collemarino, anarea situated north of the center of Ancona and where it still is today. Over theyears the company headquarters have grown, expanding from the initial fivethousand square meters to the present thirteen thousand square meters.Maurizio continues to explain “Till that moment Giulio and Elisabetta’s companyhad been focusing on the development and production of equipment and apparatusthat satisfied the requests of the first Data Transmission clients, mainly linked to theindustrial and financial world”. Nonetheless, as early as the beginning of the 80’s,the idea of developing applications able to offer new possibilities began toemerge. They began to imagine the transmission of images because, as Giuliosays “we wanted to invent something that would not only bring an advantage toIndustry and Finance but also to Mankind.” The conviction that innovation is onlyinnovation if it brings advantages to everyone started to take form.Maurizio explains that “the first experiments were made defining a systemconceived to be utilized in the medical sector for transmitting X-ray images. This anoperation that only appeared to be simple. Although the images are only in blackand white, there is an infinity of shades of gray between the two colors. In order toobtain decent quality, having only analogical technology lines of the time, it took aboutan hour and a quarter to transmit X-ray images, an infinite lapse of time incomparison to the few seconds necessary today, even in High Definition.”“The fourth element for Aethra’s growth ”says Giulio“was introduced in 1992when we hired fifteen graduates coming from the research group Isequi,coordinated by two engineers, Roberto Flaiani and Claudio Panini”. This wasright at the moment when Giulio needed to increase the Research andDevelopment team in order to develop the production of video-communication devices for British Telecom, a market which had been left openin order to confront other technological areas.

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Reflecting on the fourth element, Engineer Roberto Flaiani, head of the strategicMarketing office, says, “During the second half of the 80’s internationalstandardization boards began defining a new network for telecommunications, havingas its objective the creation of a digital device able to transmit simultaneously dataand voice. Up until then, voice and data used different networks, and data transmissionwas therefore subdivided into a whole host of implementation properties.By the beginning of the 90’s the work consisting of the definition of the new network,called ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), had reached an acceptable levelof perfection. Many telecommunications providers were moving towards a transitionfrom the traditional analogical network to the digital network. In the same wayresearch in the field of video signal compression had begun to bring forward thepossibility of transmitting video in real time, with some concessions in terms of quality,even using only the very limited band available, a 128 kilobits a second delivered byan access base (BRI) ISDN. Many believed that the “killer application” for theemerging ISDN would have been exactly that of the Videoconference.Now there were the conditions for a great opportunity in the field of videocommunication and a new market to explore without the presence of consolidatedplayers. Thanks to the collaboration with CSELT and British Telecom,Aethra began totake its first steps in this sector, without however possessing the experience and thecrucial bulk necessary to succeed in taking off and creating the foundations for a newbusiness.Once again, destiny presented itself with a friendly face. In 1992, a consortium calledIselqui, which had been created to enhance industrial research and technologicaltransfer, had financial difficulties and was forced to reorganize. On its staff there weremany technicians highly skilled in the elaboration of audio/video, due to their work on

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1989: Ciclope, the fist video telephonecreated by Aethra

1990: Multimedia Workstation, the first Aethra system for group video-communication

important European research projects. Here is how it was that a consistent group ofdesign and planning was ready to enter Aethra, perfecting in a brief time atechnological platform that allowed the company to occupy a leading role in themarket of Video communication for the following fifteen years.History gives and takes according to mysterious designs. Looking back at the facts,it is possible to see that the ISDN network only had wide success in Europe, andwhen conceived it was unthinkable as an application. IDSN gave access to theInternet at a speed superior to that permitted by the analogue network and at thesame time leaving a network free to access for telephony.Today it is being dismantled in many countries, pushed aside by the packagenetworks and by the technology for xDSL access. Of all the pioneers who venturedout in video-communication since the end of the 80’s, nowadays only two companiesremain, Aethra and Tandberg.Fifteen years of technological evolution supplied video-communications withcontinuously improving performance in terms of quality, with the introduction of High-Definition before it became common use in television. But video-conference was stillconfined to the working area, without ever succeeding in entering family habits.”

Giulio and Elisabetta also had a vision of a services section fortelecommunications, and they assigned the task to Engineer Luigi Astorri,Director of Aethra.net: “Aethra, like any other producer of high technologyapparatus, had long created a help desk division supplying technical assistance forbusiness clients who utilized apparatus for video-communication. It was the 90’s, andthe market of Video communication, essentially only national, was the absolutedominion of Telecom Italia. The help desk division, therefore, operated under thename of, and for, the national telephone operator that commercialized the apparatusunder its own brand name.The explosion in ISDN technology, having video-conferenceas its killer application, gave way in 1996 to the idea of incrementing traffic on thenetwork and therefore increasing the opportunity for business by activating afunctionality of multi-video-conference for the clientele which already had video-communication apparatus. The help desk division, afterwards, changed its name toService Center just to give emphasis to this new opportunity.In effect, the impossibility to operate directly with one’s own brand name on thenational market (Telecom was the exclusive channel for the products) was notdirectly applicable to the world of services and, therefore, Aethra began to movedirectly towards certain important clients. Success was immediate and the key wordswere “quality”, “flexibility”, and “customer care”.

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The Audio-Conference service, albeit with older origins, was following a parallel path.The first attempts went as far back as the reselling of the service Genesys in 1992and the activation of the first audio link of 90 telephone lines in Rome. Two yearslater, in 1994,Aethra got its first important clients, Benetton and IBM, expanding thecapacity of the audio links. Telecom initially did not believe much in the service ofaudio conference and, in fact, only began to move forwards in 1997.In theory, starting in the same year, the service Pergaso Audio became a competingfirm of Aethra even if realistically it wasn’t the case. The CAN (National Center ofAssistance) that ran Pergaso was colossal and was not capable of offering the levelsof flexibility and customer care characteristic of Aethra’s Service Center. The marketimmediately sensed this difference and put an order to this competition. Pergaso waschosen for a more economic but rigid service, Aethra for flexibility and quality.Quality and customer care also meant supplying efficient equipment for themanagement of customer’s own needs for service. This led to the creation of “MyTelereunion ™”, the first portal on the web. It gave clients the possibility to bookservices and control the progress of use. “My Telereunion ™”, or simply MyTele forthose in the know, contributed in increasing the diversification of Pergaso consideringthat Telecom had never activated a similar instrument and continued to managebookings by fax and telephone.These two services built the supporting foundation of the Service Center thatexpanded in any case in the following years, extending its own offer through webconferencing, video streaming, the leasing of equipped meeting rooms throughout theworld and the organization and management of special events.”

During this phase of Aethra the structural organization appeared somewhatsimplified due to the absence of a marketing and commercial structure.TelecomItalia managed all the marketing and commercial areas given the status of theirmonopoly.Therefore in this first phase of Aethra’s development, these functionswere covered by the then Telecom. But envisioning the end of the monopoly in1998, Giulio decided to begin the study of a development necessary to Aethraon an international level.

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Video communicationand its applications

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With the telephone and TV, it is not so much the message,but the sender that is transmitted

Marshall McLuhan

In the spring of 1988 one of Giulio’s friends, an English engineer in charge ofa group of research and development who worked with British Telecom,invited him to England to show him a new application that they were working

on in their laboratories. Giulio had known this engineer since Aethra had begunattending international conventions and meetings where the discussions wereabout the standard of technologies, regulations and future applications.“Attending these meetings proved to be extremely important for us becausethey allowed us to learn the lines of development in the sector and so permittedus to make the right choices for our future.”Giulio flew to London and had his first encounter with video-communication.“They were systems that utilized analogical lines but were already quite efficientand marketable.” As a result Aethra began importing British Telecom video-communication systems to Italy. “I would never have thought of getting involvedin video-communication, but in British Telecom’s proposal I saw an excellentopportunity for Aethra and decided to consider that technology.” For aboutthree years, from 1989 to 1992, business continued.Aethra adapted the devices,improving them, and moreover, enhancing the design. Unfortunately, later BritishTelecom decided to radically change its strategy and to abandon the business ofvideo-communication, assigning instead new and different jobs to the group ofresearch headed by the engineer who had first revealed to Giulio the emerging

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technologies of video-communication. “One day in 1992, my friend at BritishTelecom phoned to tell me that the group he had directed would be employedin other activities and that video-communication was going to be dropped. Atthis point we decided to go on alone, continuing our own path.”Aethra’s staff believed in that project. Having distributed British Telecom’sproducts, they had also developed considerable technical and technological skill,and so they decided to create a laboratory with the mission of making a newproduct for video-communication.“It was not an easy decision to make becauseat that time the distribution of British Telecom’s products counted for no morethan 15% of our total revenue. It was only a niche product, but we wereconvinced of the market potential.” Once again the heavens were smiling onAethra, as they had done since its birth. In1992 Iselqui, a local company inAncona specialized in development, suddenly closed, stranding a group of younggraduates. This group had been guided by two engineers, Roberto Flaiani andClaudio Panini, who had the appropriate technical and technological skills todedicate themselves to the transmission for video-communication. By employingthem Aethra reinforced its team, concentrating this group of fresh graduates onthe development of video-communication starting from the experience andknowledge that the company had acquired up to that moment.“For us time wasespecially important because we did not want the market to sense adiscontinuity, it was fundamental for us to succeed in presenting the first productwithin the year 1993, and we did.”

The first “made in Aethra” devices for video-communication were ready for themarket around the end of 1993 and the beginning of 1994. In 1994, Sip was

1994: Giugiaro design, Maia videophone with 6” LCD screen

1993: FormulaUno, one of Aethra’s firstrollabout systems

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Aethra’s major client and at that time it held the state monopoly in the nationaltelecommunication market. “Essentially, Sip was our only client, accounting forover 90% of our revenue, with the rest coming from other clients and frommultinational companies that purchased our systems in order to connect theirdifferent branches”.In the fifteen years from 1976, when Aethra established itself in its headquartersat Collemarino, to 1994, the number of employees in the company doubledfrom 80 to 160 people.The video-communication business was growing. In 1997it was already worth 30 million lire, a sum that represented about 25% of thetotal revenue. Even though the principal client was still SIP, the results began toconfirm the validity of Giulio and his collaborators’ choices taken five years

earlier betting on technology and on the applications of video-communication.There was however still a long way to go.They began moreover to analyze thepotential of business, of growth, and of a scenario created by the prospect thatthe imminent liberalization in the field of data telecommunication was promisingto bring with it.

Claudio Panini, Research & Development Manager, talks of the growth of Videocommunication.“The scenario of market globalization and more and more heated competitionmeant that companies were under constant pressure to research ways to recoverproductivity. From this came various tendencies, such as that of decentralizingdecisional processes, creating a distributed organization and the so called“virtualization”. Companies looked for more efficient dimensions through themanagement of outsourcing many activities and the functional integration withpartner networks. A modern company must look abroad, capitalizing all the

1997: Voyager, Aethra's first portable video-communication system

1995: Electra, Aethra's first rollabout systemwith integrated MCU

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opportunities and resources to enlarge its portfolio of products and services as wellas getting as close as possible to its own markets, in order to be able to offer apersonalized service and to create a lasting relationship. Today more than everprogress depends on communication.It’s no longer possible that a group of designers in different geographical locationscan come together for ‘face to face’ meetings, not only for economic reasons, becauseof the costs associated with travelling, but most of all because of time. Beating thecompetition is always a matter of timely intervention and in traditional meetingsmost of the time is spent traveling, punctuality can be compromised by traffic or bytransport problems, and it may occur that some crucial component may not bepresent. On the contrary, meetings using Video communication can be organized inthe briefest time to respond to eventual emergencies.They tend to be prepared in abetter manner, to be structured and so to be more efficient and briefer than physicalmeetings, and, given that it is easier to guarantee a wider participation, it is lessprobable that a key element will be missing or that the participants must spendfurther time in a second moment to brief the absentees. Physical transfers are alwaysa cause of stress and risk, and they reduce the time we spend with our families.Todaymost developed countries have adopted a policy to stimulate working-from-home,with the prospect of less traffic, a reduction in pollution and making cities moreliveable.Distance training is an instrument that can be used to bridge a gap that wouldotherwise be difficult to overcome in every geographical area at a disadvantagebecause of the lack of efficient services, of a system of advanced education or of afertile industrial under layer that gives access to knowledge and the necessary skillsfor the activation of an economic activity. Then there are cases where Videocommunication integrated with Data Transmission is the only option. Just think of apatient who arrives in a decentralized emergency unit in a critical condition: without

Electra, High Definition technology and Made in Italydesign, exclusively for Aethra by Michele De Lucchi

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the possibility of getting a precise diagnosis from a consultation with an expert in adifferent location, they risk being transferred to the wrong hospital.The scenarios described above, along with many others, are evidence of an acuteneed for the technology of video-communication. So we must ask ourselves to whatlevel are we able to satisfy it today. Ideally, we would like a perfect “tele-presence”,the sensation of overcoming distance and a fully multi-sensory experience, yesartificial, but almost completely comparable to the real thing. The video-communication of today is not far from this paradigm: it adds vision to vocalcommunication but loses its tri-dimensionality. Systems of video-conference withthree-dimensional Video and ‘spaced’ audio are, however, object to research and nottoo far from a commercial distribution” (see appendix 2 on video-communication).Aethra is also about tele-medicine, as Roberto Fogliardi, strategic marketingspecialist says: “In the last couple of decades the term tteellee--mmeeddiicciinnee has had variousdefinitions, all of which have certain characteristics in common: the use of Information& Communication Technology (ICT) systems, the distance between users, the aim toguarantee a high-rate health care anywhere in any moment and at a reasonablecost. Aethra’s experience with tele-medicine dates back to the 80’s when analogicaltechnology was in use. There was no problem transmitting black and white, butbetween black and white there are many shades of gray. That is the reason whysending X-rays used to take an hour and fifteen minutes, with the resolution beingtoo mediocre and insufficient for the image to have any significant value.Only at the beginning of the 90’s did companies start to consider the possibility ofusing digital communication systems for social purposes and not only for businessmatters.First attempts were made trying to send digital radiological data, scanning old-styleX-rays. It immediately became clear that dealing with complex data, like that of thehuman body, seemed a difficult perspective due to the insufficient transmissionvelocity of the time.However, over time Digital Freeways began to expand and Aethra continuedexperimenting, integrating biological data with video-communication. Aethra’s codecprograms were initially integrated with true and real “Tele-consultation stations”(Eykona) so as to connect various specialists with one another. For example, a hemo-dynamics specialist and a heart surgeon can discuss in real-time whether a patientshould undergo surgery or not.As the years went by, the costs of these new technologies dropped significantlyand devices suitable for tele-home-care were starting to be designed. Unfortunately,year in year out, tele-home-care appeared to be very slow in picking up, mainly

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because the greater part of house-patients are older people, who felt sceptical and

unable to use devices which are sometimes difficult to use without the help of aspecialist. Video-communication in home-care, therefore, has a double purpose. Onone hand it allows the doctors to see their patients and to guide them in the correctuse of the medical equipment, and, on the other, it provides the patients and theirfamily with both practical and psychological help.A simple video system, called “Tele-comfort” has been presented as a device to help older people, making long-distance-care easier. The research and development of tele-medicine is a project that Aethrahas never wanted to put to one side.”“Thanks to video-communication, Aethra can overcome linguistic barriers”, reportsEngineer Loredana Taddei, chief software engineer. “The importance ofcommunication and of the most reliable transmission of one’s thoughts and ideas isundeniable. Developing video-communication systems over the years,Aethra has helpedpeople far away exchange their ideas and connect in an easier and more reliable way.In 2000 such a challenge became even more exciting when Aethra had theopportunity to participate in a European project The main objective of this projectwas to design a system with simultaneous translation, so that video-communicationcould be possible between people speaking different languages and of differentnationality. In times when distance is no longer a problem, there continue to belinguistic barriers, thus limiting a natural exchange of information and the possibilityto contribute to the solution of whatever type of problems. The project NeSpoLe(Negotiation through Spoken Language in E-commerce) lasted three years andinvolved some of the most important European Universities. It led to the creation of

Beginning of the 90's, Eykona, tele-consultingstation for tele-medicine

software which, during video-communication, gives the simultaneous translation,based on the recognition of the concept in the whole, and not on the translation ofthe single word. This concept is then transformed into a new phrase in differentlanguage and reproduced by a voice-synthesizer.During the creation of the project, two particular situations underwent specific study.The first regarded tourism and involved an English, French or German client whowanted to book a trip through an Italian tourist agency.The two were connected byvideo-conference and, each speaking their own language, exchanged all thenecessary information.The second situation of great use regarded a tourist with health problems in a foreigncountry. The hotel provided the guest with a video-communication system withsimultaneous translation, so the guest had the possibility to contact a doctor andexplain in their own language their symptoms and from the doctor, who spoke theirown language, got indications to solve or better the illness.Also in this case, Aethra could not pass up the opportunity to enthusiastically takepart in an initiative that with further development could contribute to the process ofunification of the nations”.

“The development of video-communication was regarded as an objective ofpriority in order to evolve the offer of our systems to an international level”Giulio illustrates.“It was a long, demanding path, but we successfully became oneof the main players on the international market of video-communication.”Together with the use of video-communication beyond video-conferencing,the development was studied for otherapplications which could bring advantagesfrom the use of video image transmissions.Applications that include Tele-medicine,distance learning and video surveillance havealso proven to be beneficial to developparticular services, which even today move Giulio. For example take the case ofchildren confined to isolation in hospitals – thanks to video-conferencing theycan remain in contact with their classmates and teachers. (See appendix 1concerning the history and development of Aethra).

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Liberalization andInternationalization

(PPhhaassee 22 – 1998-2004)

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When thunder strikes you can be certain that an idea has flashedIppolito Nievo

In 1997 the revenue generated by Sip, now Telecom Italia, amounted to 94%of the total. However, the liberalization of this sector began to take shape onthe horizon and above all the eventuality of internationalizing Aethra’s

business began to be taken into consideration. “We had to decide whether toexpand and develop, or whether to be absorbed by some multi-nationalcompany ready to enter Italy” Giulio states. “We analyzed the possibility ofdeveloping our international presence in order to prepare a plan of investmentsaimed at increasing the number of our collaborators, doubling our staff from 200to 400, or as an alternative, reducing it by 40 people should it be necessary toresell imported foreign products in Italy.” It was decided to deal with theprospect of internationalization, and so Aethra with its products and technologywas presented around the world, from South America to the Far East. It beganin 1997 with 3% of the total revenue generated abroad, in 1998 it increased to12%, and in 1999 to 26%, before reaching a 40% quota in 2000. “In order toconfront the international market we needed a complete range of video-communication products, but we also were aware of the fact that we were inline with other telecommunication producers and we were taking advantage ofthose in order to enter foreign markets.”

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The decision to aim at international markets proved to be farsighted andfundmental. From 2001 to 2002, after the change in administration of TelecomItalia, Aethra’s revenue from Telecom Italia reduced by 70%, making up for 35%of its total turnover. Aethra managed to diminish the negative effect thanks tothe excellent results that it was obtaining from the international markets.The company faced the situation decisively and continued investing fervently inthe development of video-communication, with about one hundred techniciansworking on this.This commitment permitted Aethra to become one of the mostimportant players in the field of telecommunications.The level of growth in revenue from video-communication in 2004 led Aethrato be considered the fourth most important company at international level. Inthis way 2004 was considered the year that Phase 2 was fulfilled, and Phase 3started, with the initiation of an administrative structure for the development ofAethra’s future. “It was precisely due to focusing our attention on expanding ininternational markets that we survived. Aethra reached an incredibly high leveland was considered one of the most important companies in the world inVideocommunication systems. “Phase 2” ended with internationalization.Within

Research and Development Department, the heart of Aethra

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Aethra, people know that foresightedness, strategy, and timing are mandatory,but these alone are not enough.The quality of the products and the continuityin developing technology are indispensable. As Giulio says, “the time variablecomplicates the function that includes the variables of quality, costs and time. It isprecisely the time variable that makes it a spinning function, and this situation canturn into an important opportunity that Aethra is seizing.”Although these years were incredibly complex for the company, they neverthelessbought great joy to the Viezzoli family. Marco, Giulio and Elisabetta’s second son,became a father. First Luca arrived in 2001, followed by Lorenzo in 2003.At the end of 2004, evaluating the results obtained that confirmed the reality ofthe company’s presence on the international market, phase 2 was concluded.“For us it was a test phase to see if we could be an international company.Therefore the company structure would have remained stable until we had theconfirmation that we were ready for international markets. This started tohappen in 2005, when an evolution of the structure was started.” Giuliounderlines.

Engineer Corrado Mazzoccato, Director of Operational Marketing, tells us aboutthe start up of the company’s internationalization and Aethra’s introduction intothe global market: “In 1995, even though it had reached considerable dimensionswith more than 200 employees and a deeply-rooted presence in Italy (thanks alsoto its long-term activity of supplying various products and technology to TelecomItalia), Aethra was however a company with very few international ties (foreignrevenue was less than 3%) and with only one important client.Engineer Viezzoli had already foreseen the liberalization of the Telecommunicationsector and the consequent opening of the market.With great farsightedness he hireda small group of people with the immediate objective “of verifying the validity of thecompany in international markets.”For Aethra it was immediately clear that “internationalizing the company” meantseveral things: starting an activity for the commercialization of products and servicesfor foreign countries; activating positions of presence and support for commercialclients and partners; gradually transferring production outside the country so as tolocate it near clients to take advantage of local costs where these would besignificantly less than the costs in our country.With all the enthusiasm of those facingan important goal, the initial team of four people dedicated to boosting export tookpart in trade fairs and international conventions, and developed promotionaldocumentation and visibility on the Internet. It was not long before requests from

foreign companies wanting to commercialize video-communication products startedto arrive. The market was basically dominated by two North-American producers.Furthermore, the complexity of the standards, and of audio and video codingtechnology, were creating a significant barrier to the entry of new producers.The difficulties were immediately obvious.Aethra had an unknown brand and a namethat was hard to pronounce in English-speaking countries abroad. The productsrequired a complete localization in terms of application interface and userdocumentation. Moreover, local approval was complicated. The partners with whomwe launched our business were very quick to remind us all of our flaws for developingthe local markets.In spite of these difficulties, success arrived fairly soon.There were product orders forforeign branches of Italian groups. Banks were the most interested in buying, but alsoa big car maker from Turin started to ask for a few systems in various foreigncountries.However, we also suffered a few disappointments. An important project in Germanygot blocked because our interface in German wasn’t perfect, and the samehappened for several bids and big projects.The company failed to qualify for a big supply contract to an American car makerthat wanted to install some hundreds of systems all over the world.It was clear that our geographical coverage was too small and we were hardly visible,having installed very few systems indeed and with almost no credentials. I rememberone day, considering this negative scenario, Mr. Viezzoli called us to remind us thecompany was also operating in the Telecommunication field, and that the Video-communication products were only a part of the catalogue. He was spurring us tostart the market development for other technology too, in particular for the ISDNapparatus, for which the company had begun an interesting cooperation withTelecom Italia.Aethra was the only supplier of Network Terminations and Terminal Adapters. Itdeveloped and supplied Measuring tools for installers and had contributed decisivelyto the launch of the ISDN service in Italy, acquiring wide knowledge in the field.Mr. Viezzoli urged us to see if we could use our experience abroad, understandingthat this was the way for us not to be de-motivated by our first frustrations. So westarted a study, using also data coming from the European Union, with the aim toboost Telecommunications, and, most of all, the ISDN network.This study showed thatin Europe there were two groups of nations running at two different speeds. On theone hand there was Germany, France, Spain and Italy, with a good level of installedsystems, close to 10% of total lines and with growth rates between 20 and 30% ,

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and, on the other hand, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Greece, lagging far behind.Central Europe was accelerating its economic development with Hungary, the CzechRepublic, Slovakia and Poland being the new candidates in the enlargement of theEU, and who could not miss out on the new development of the ISDN networks.Furthermore,Telecommunication carriers, still in a monopoly, were receiving constantrequests to develop the network. The driving factors of this were the installation ofthe second line for phone services in small companies and in the SOHO (Small OfficeHome Office) market to differentiate the business line from the domestic line, thesecond lines for Internet connections to keep the standard phone line free, and thefact that Internet speed was in fact better compared to an analogue modem andperceived as adequate for what was then necessary . Internet was in its early daysand users didn’t require high performance. ADSL technologies were still in theirexperimental phase and the difficulties of installation and management emergedimmediately, while ISDN was available and, as had been seen in Germany, had asuccess story to imitate.The Commission in charge for innovation in the European Community, supported bytwo big producers of commutation centers with the aim of facilitating thedevelopment of ISDN, launched many initiatives, including the GIIF (Global ISDNIndustry Forum), a Forum of Telecom carriers and technology providers. Aethra wasinvited to participate from the beginning.We were on the executive committee andhad an active role. We also organized events in Ancona. Furthermore the Forumpromoted training days which were completely free for minor carriers who wanted todevelop the network. During the courses Aethra’s equipment was used so as to startto make the company known out on the market.Our target was limited and aimed specifically at the operators of the second groupwho were lagging behind with ISDN technology.

The preparation study on the market development wanted to analyse theattractiveness, based on data of the possible growth and investment drive of the localoperator and also our ability to develop the market, evaluating the technicalrequirements and the way the standards were put in force. The objective was todefine the necessary timing to supply the local market with the proper solution.Wetried to analyze first the elements that differentiated our offer and the advantagesthat could make it interesting for local Telecom companies. It can certainly be saidthat the experience matured in Italy, where in different phases and in differentregions we used different standards, allowing us to be ready and have the necessaryskills.

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Moreover, the completeness of Aethra’s offer, that included network terminations withall the possible configurations, terminal adapters for specific applications and, mostof all, measuring tools, put us in a very favorable condition.The first target was Belgium. The local carrier, that wanted to accelerate thedevelopment, opened a bid for a few thousand lines to be installed within two years.Aethra qualified well on the technical part, with better characteristics than thealready existing supplier, a big German Telecom company. It wasn’t long before weagreed on prices and general supply conditions and won the bid.The supply took offin an unexpected way.The figures that had been estimated for two years were absorbed in four months andwe felt a high level of appreciation from the customer, who in turn benefited fromhigh priority and quality.

The Research & Development unit was continually improving our products with newfeatures that repeatedly surprised our customers. For example, by doubling theresistance to lightning we solved a serious problem that otherwise would be veryexpensive for the subscriber in case of damage and substitution of the product.TheBelgium carrier, part of a Telecom carrier that had a common financer, presented itsexperience with Aethra to other Telecom companies. From this we got otherconnections with the Danish and the Hungarian operators.Our business in Belgium was in full sail. They also asked us to supply their 400installer technicians with our equipment and invited us to be part of a project withthe State lottery. Also here we benefited from our experience in Italy with a similarproject we had developed and where the requirements of reliability and solidity werefundamental. Shipments were increasing, we had become their number two supplier,behind the German multinational that, although cut out from the ISDN supplies, wasclearly deep-rooted in Belgium.On the wave of our success in Belgium, the team working on internationalizationdeveloped parallel business in many countries.The success in South America deservesits own chapter. It was facilitated by the presence of Telecom Italia and the supportof a local company where many Italians worked, allowing us to become the supplierfor many operators in Chile and Argentina.Following the projects launched in Latin America, where Telefonica had a strong hold,the right conditions were formed to also do business in Spain with the same nationaloperator. The products were being quickly adjusted to the local standards to let usparticipate in the many bids we were invited to and where we confronted the mainsuppliers.

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In 1999 we took part in 44 bids held by telecom operators for ISDN and we wonmore than half. In 1998 our aim of developing international presence with the targetof working with three new telecom countries every three months was achieved inthree out of four quarterly periods. In the course of 1998 the demand for ISDNproducts was very high, stimulated by Internet applications and fostered by thestrong economic growth of that time.The revenue leapfrogged between 1997 and 1998, thanks to the commercializationof the ISDN Telecommunication products abroad.

In the meantime, the process of Internationalization was being consolidated and wewere adding branches and offices abroad. Soon after we also launched a productivedelocalization in South Africa, following the local government’s indications, and thenin Poland, using a local workforce. In l998 we opened production in China in theelectronic district of Shenzhen, where we also made marginal developments andprojects for the local market. In 2000 a technological innovation began. ISDN wasbeing replaced by ADSL technology. It was a gradual process and in some countriesit was very slow but it allowed Aethra to maintain its presence in these marketswhile getting ready for the change in technology.

Again Italy was the country where the company first tested its business, and laterexported its products and knowledge abroad.

A new drive towards internationalization came from the wide range of video-communication products. In 2000 the market had a new expansion, supported bythe availability of IP networks that provided new bandwidth for the applications atcheaper prices.

The first successes arrived when a big prestigious project with the European SpaceAgency (ESA) chose Aethra after careful and detailed tests. Furthermore, Aethracompleted its coverage with a widespread network of salespeople in Europe and,gradually, in other countries.Then there was also the opening of the Japanese market with a high-profile partnerthat quickly gained a 15% market share. This brought in a further improvement inquality in internal processes and in product stability”.At this point Mr. Viezzoli considered the test for the company on the foreign marketsuccessfully concluded. But being an expert sailor, he warned us of new storms wemight have had to face in the turbulent seas of Telecommunication, always sensitive

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to technological innovation and economic downturns.These would be also be difficultseas for a company the founder called Aethra, which stands for clear skies and openspaces, hence ideal for good navigation.

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AAeetthhrraa’’ss pprreesseennccee iinn tthhee wwoorrlldd

CCOOVVEERRAAGGEE OOFF TTHHEE WWOORRLLDD MMAARRKKEETT:: MMOORREE TTHHAANN 6600CCOOUUNNTTRRIIEESS

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The future(PPhhaassee 33 – 2005-infinity)

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The future belongs to those who see the possibilities before they become obvious

Theodore Levitt

Life has to be interpreted by History,but it has to be imagined with a vision of the future in constant evolution

Giulio

Following plan, in March 2005 Aethra started it’s 3rd phase with agenerational handing over of the reins, pushed forward by the resultsachieved in 2004 that defined the completion of the program of phase 2,

or of international expansion, that had begun in 1998. According to thedevelopment plan, Giulio and Elisabetta’s second son Marco took over themanagement of the company as Chief Executive Officer. Giulio kept his positionas President and continued working, actively dedicating his attention to theevolutions of short and long term technology that coincided primarily with highdefinition video-communication, along with the concept of tele-presence, withthree-dimensional video-communication and network equipment for mediumand high profile areas.Giulio says, “Closing 2006 with a positive financial result was a motivation tocontinue to invest, to support the acceleration of our business that requiresquicker development, higher attention towards international markets,continuous growth of technology, and constant engagement on the road toinnovation.We had to set up an investment plan to continue our developmenton the road so far traced out taking advantage of the results achieved up to nowto introduce new developments and new applications”.The extension of the range of products for network access and on new projectsin the field of services with Aethra.Net will integrate also the offer of devices.“With this vision, new areas of use are developing, also through the areas of

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MNVO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) and IPTV (Internet Protocol TV)services”, states Giulio.

After having dealt with “Phase 1” and “Phase 2”, which finished in 2004, Elisabettaand Giulio’s view developed into “Phase 3”, thanks to an organizationdimensioned on the national and international markets: Aethra 3.The Aethra development project can be illustrated as follows:

AETHRA’S DEVELOPMENT“First Phase” – Aethra 1. Development of National Markets: 1972-1997• TelecomITALIA – Monopoly• 1972: Beginning of Data Transmission

Data TesterNTI – NTI +

• 1989:Videocommunication with British Telecom• 1992: Aethra Videocommunication• 1997: total annual revenue of 88.412.000, 94% of which with TelecomITALIA,

3% in the National market and 3% in the International market.“Second Phase” – Aethra 2. Development of International Market. Revenue.A. Estimated analysis to obtain an aligned international presence of thenecessary company framework.• 1998: total annual revenue of 80.167.000, 12% of which from the International

Market• 1999: total annual revenue of 86.415.325, 24% of which from the International

Market• 2000: total annual revenue of 77.594.532, 40% of which from the International

Market• 2001: Management change of TelecomITALIA, total annual revenue of

66.358.973, 67.4% from the International Market.• 2002: total annual revenue of 72.556.823, 69.18% of which from the

International Market• 2003: total annual revenue of 76.123.281, 54.64% of which from the

International Market• 2004: total annual revenue of 70.954.440, 41.27% from the International

Market“Phase A” positively completed with presence in more than 60 countries.

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B. Phase for the organic development required by the National andInternational Markets.• 2005: total annual revenue of 67.484.823, 46.87% of which from the

International Market• 2006: total annual revenue of 83.837.179, 42.90% of which from the

International Market• 2007: total annual revenue until December of 50.573.831, 50.67% of which

from the International Market, with an estimate of about 75 million euro.

“Third Phase Aethra 3”. Development programme for the company’sadministrative body through a continuous view of the Value creation, asexpected from 2005.

Organization chart development1. Ownership Committee2. Board of Directors3. Managing Director CEO

a.Management of national and international external activities- Finance- Businessb. Control of internal activities with the Chief Executive

-

10.000.000

20.000.000

30.000.000

40.000.000

50.000.000

60.000.000

70.000.000

80.000.000

90.000.000

100.000.000

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

Yearly total revenue International revenue

Management change ofTelecom ItaliaPhase 2A)

Estimated analysis ofinternationalisation

Phase 2B)Organic developmentfor the markets

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c. CIO’s Activitiesd. Balanced Score Card and Enterprise Resource Planning Development

4. Chief Executive- Coordination of internal activities- Coordinator of BSC and ERP

5. Managers- In charge of their respective areas of the company’s activities- People from BSC and ERP who have weekly meetings

B. Development of Aethra 3 Administrative BodyBI. Introduction of BSC intended as the brain of the Administrative BodySome information about the 4 PerspectivesI. Financial-Economic Perspective

a. Company’s development phase through the research of investmentb. Maintenance phase during which the company keeps attracting investmentand at the same time ensuring that the rates of return on invested capital would increase.c. phase of investment gains made during the two previous phases

2. Market of the business areas Perspectivea. Market share showing the sales volumeb. Customer acquisition measuring the rate through which a specific businessunit activates a customer.c. Building customer loyalty identifies the rate with which the company maintains customer relationshipsd. Customer satisfaction considers the customer satisfaction through specificperformance criteriae. Customer profitability measures the gains coming from a customer after having subtracted all the outlays made to support them

3. Internal processes Perspectivea. Production and services: delivering the products in sync with the f elaborate function (Q, C,T) b. Processes of after-sales service: customer satisfaction for the quality and thepromptnessc. Research and Development: creating new products, optimizing time, costand qualityd. Applied Research: proposals for development with a view of more than 3yearse.Analysis of new suggestions for the development of services: new and clear

ering theate function

e:ty and the

eating newd quality

orthan 3

r thed clears together

suggestions of integrated systems together with the supply of apparatus.4. Learning and Development Perspective

a. Staff evaluation: measurement of productivity, loyalty and satisfaction, that may include:- Participation in decision-taking- Rewards for work performed professionally and promptly- Access to information necessary to allow good work performance- Bonuses to show creativity and initiative- Personnel support level- General satisfaction in being part of the companyb. Staff retraining- Strategic retraining- General retraining- Skills increasec. Alignment of individual targets- Management targets from the top to the base- Communication towards the base- Financial-economic plan and target definition- Alignment of individual targets

5. Activities for the BSC developmenta. Connecting the measures of satisfaction sheets to the company strategyb. Development of the structure towards the company strategyc. Management of the company strategyd. Development of a strategic alignment from the top to the base

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AREA TOTAL INVESTMENT (in thousands of euros)1. Administration and Finance 1.2002. Management control 7503. Applied Research 1.9504. R&D 8.5005. Marketing 2.1006. Sales 4.7007. After-sales 9688. Engineering 1.0209. Purchasing Department 21010. C.I.O. 2.50011. Servizi Tel. 1.9003 Year total 25.798 First year 8.798 Second year 8.500 Third year 8.500

INVESTMENT FORECASTS 2008-2010

e.Targets, allocation of resources, budget initiativesf. Feedback and the process of strategic deepening

B2. Enterprise Resource Planning IntroductionThe acronym ERP shows integrated software for unitary management of thecompany’s processes- The expected improvements are:

a) Ready informationb) Information sharingc) Unambiguous information

(from ERP Project by E.Buchi & M.Giammarchi. GSC 27/03/2007)B3 Investment forecasts 2008-2010This programme of investment should be completed in 3 years to acquire

partners, software packages, and equipment for the different company areas.

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MANAGING DIRECTOR

TELECOMMUNICATIONAREA

BUSINESSUNIT

VIDEOAREA

APPLIEDRESEARCH

PURCHASINGDEPARTMENT

R&D ENGINEERING AFTER-SALESSUPPORT

STAFFPROFESSIONALDEVELOPMENT

SERVICESAREA

FINANCE INFORMATIONSYSTEMS

GENERAL MANAGEMENT

B4 Proposal for the company

Plan of the company’s organization chart suited to deal with the continuousacceleration of technological development and of national and internationalmarket development. Aethra 3 looks out for the future Video communicationmarket evolution, moving towards a growth phase from the limited area of bigusers to the unlimited area of medium and small users’market.This happened inthe past in the Telephone, Telegraphs and Transmission Data markets”. At thisstage Elisabetta and Giulio’s view of AETHRA’S DEVELOPMENT ends.Elisabetta and Giulio say the following about the company’s future course: “Weare currently living a very important period for the evolution of man who isfinally coming out of the prehistoric times.This change coincides with a reversalin the importance of physical strength and intellectual strength, in favour of thelatter. Up to now man has lived from the earth and the primary sources ofnature, whereas now it is man who creates new raw material, directly influencingthe development of nano-cells and atoms. This represents the characterisingelement of the evolutionary transition entirely based on knowledge. New nano-technological issues are in the stage of development and they will have animpact on different areas of application and are constitutive features of natureitself. It is enough to think about nano-metals that are not extracted from minesbut created in laboratories, or nano-cells specifically created to substitutediseased cells. Furthermore these nano-cells can also be used in industrialsectors, not only in medical sectors.We are at the beginning of a new era withnew means to do things that are entirely new. There will be components,products, even colour tones that are still not imaginable today. For this reason itis difficult to foresee the future, even with the wildest of imaginations. It isunknown what will happen when man uses a greater percentage of intellectualwits which nowadays are not completely exploited. This is my view whichsupports evolution in the human mind. I can see that my children andgrandchildren have a much livelier mind than previous generations. There aregreat differences between generations due to the fact that during their growth,youth continue to use their muscles less and their minds more. Looking to thefuture has always been motivating, and during my life is something that I havealways done at sea. I have looked back at the past only to gain from myexperiences, and to have a better sense for the future, constantly developing the

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company, and above all increasing advanced research in the R & D departmentand suitable investment to maintain position in international trade.

Engineer Roberto Flaiani, who leads Strategic Marketing at Aethra, tells us aboutthe vision of the technological and application evolution in the future. “It’s alwayshard to speculate about the future and in technology it is even harder, because in thisfield we have seen more changes in the last twenty years than we ever saw before.Changes that once took decades and generations to happen, and could therefore beabsorbed and assimilated, today are worn out in a few years’ time, creatingbewilderment and worry. Aethra cannot avoid the turbulence of the world thatsurrounds it and since companies don’t have anything like a radar to provide themwith complete certainty, all we can do is follow a course paying attention to somelandmarks.Many articles have been written by experts saying that we live in the society ofknowledge, whose distinctive characteristics are super-nationality, overcomingtraditional cultural barriers and valuing of human capital. It’s not just by chance thaton a European level the so-called “Lisbon strategy” requests that the European Unionbecomes “the most competitive and dynamic economy in the world based onknowledge, able to generate a sustainable economic growth with new and better jobsand a wider social cohesion”.In the society of knowledge the importance of physical, economical and socialnetworks becomes more important and the question of cooperation is central.In a recent interview the chairman of Cisco Systems, John Chambers, affirmed thatthe industry should rapidly abandon a model based on hyper-competition and onshort-term results that ends up destroying value and productive tissue in a country.Industry should move on to a more and more cooperative model and adopt thecollaborative dynamics typical of the “social networks” that have developed on theInternet and that are hugely successful today.If these assumptions are correct the future of Aethra, a company which has beendeveloping tools for cooperation and for the overcoming of transnational barriers foryears, should be bright. Also a series of additional elements prompt us to feeloptimistic. Day after day we, along with the experts, become more and moreconvinced that video will spread further, becoming part of every-day use at least inworking environments.Once upon a time, the scarce availability of bandwidth made video transmissiondifficult. In the near future the massive investments in the new generation network(NGN) and in a higher penetration of optical fiber will also provide residential users

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with a capacity of more than 50 Megabits per second. Once an obstacle, thenetwork turns into an incentive towards the take-up of video, since carriers are thefirst to be interested in applications that rely on this capacity.On a parallel level, the technology of tele presence will make the naturalness andproductivity of a distance meeting more and more similar to that of a physicalmeeting. This will allow the removal of many barriers that have traditionally limitedthe penetration of video-communication. Greater will be the belief that video-conferencing is a service that frees users from doing anything other than enter ameeting room.Today we are seeing the progressive decline of analogue telephones.Instead, new IP phones are emerging which are more functional and easy to use. Inthe near future IP phones will be gradually phased out by video-telephones, andpersonal visual communication will become part of every-day working life.Finally, we can imagine that in the future Video-communication will also become anelement of the television experience. Today the interactive component is limited toon-line surveys or lotteries that rely mainly on the telephone, whether fixed or mobile,but in the coming years video-communication will be used more and more not onlyto engage the public on air, taking people inside the video as co-protagonists of ashow, but also to create “clubs” where user groups can share comments andopinions”.

Giulio followed the evolution of Aethra.net and in 2001 the Service Centerpresented such a solid offer that Aethra’s management decided to take theobvious step: spin off the unit from the company and make it an self-sufficiententity for service development called Aethra.net Srl.2000-2006 essentially saw the consolidation of the business of Aethra.net. Thiswas due to successful commercial deals, evolutions and technological updates,the migration towards Data networks based on IP and the evolution of theportal, that among other things, changed its name from MyTeleriunione to themore international MeetIn.Engineer Luigi Astorri talks about the evolution of the Service Center MeetInand the new company vision. “In December 2006 Aethra.net was reabsorbed inAethra Ltd. This seemingly contradictory move was guided by the observation thatthe market was becoming more and more developed and demanding. It stilldemanded devices but also, and more importantly, solutions which answer specificneeds. In such a scenario, the sole offer of devices, even if of a very high level, wasnot believed sufficient to grant the development of the company. It was necessary toexpand the offer with new solutions meant to be a mix of terminal apparatus,

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infrastructure apparatus and operation and maintenance services. Thanks to thereturn of Aethra.net, Aethra became the only international producer that had acomplete offer portfolio, from measuring and test tools to terminal apparatus,infrastructure apparatus and added-value services.Currently the brand Aethra.net is kept only for branding reasons and to avoiddiscontinuity on the market. The MeetIn services offered today are a technologicalevolution of the historical services. Finally, in the medium term interestingopportunities arose in the converging services, with the possibility of setting upconferences regardless of the technology available for each participant. In this casein this virtual environment users with a cell phone, a Videophone, a Pc connected tothe Internet, or high-performance video-communication apparatus, can all meet. Andall this regardless of networks and transmission technologies (internet, ISDN, satellite,UMTS, etc.). But the convergence challenge calls also for the development of verticalapplications and services based on the integration of Mobile (UMTS) and Fixed (IPe ISDN) video-communication.This is certainly an unexplored market, but with greatpotential both for the Consumer and Business areas. For the latter, more suitable toAethra’s capacities, Aethra.net’s Service Center is already analyzing and developingthe first demonstration applications, such as infomobility services, that allow a driverequipped with a videophone to see what the traffic is like on the road he’s about totake.The main virtue of a sailor is to be able to look ahead to guess what the wind willdo and, maybe, Aethra’s future could be focused on a growing service business andapparatus offer”.

“How do I see Aethra’s future? In my opinion Aethra should carry on being symbolizedby the same positive, challenging, brave and human spirit that it has been lavishedwith by its founder and by the people close to him” says Elena Viezzoli. “At the sametime, the company must adjust to the current world that is continually and rapidlychanging, the world of Internet, of globalization, internationalization, of knowledge andcreativity. But most of all, it’s necessary that Aethra continually develops widerdelocalization, acquires more internal skills and specialization, and internationalteams. The latter means having a mixture of different cultures, acceleration andflexibility to achieve a competitive time to the worldwide market.All of this, combinedwith the innate ability written in the DNA of Italians to create beautiful things, willmake Aethra unique and highly recognizable in the market where it operates! Froma simple trade-mark to a new brand identity!”.

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Giulio concludes by thinking of tomorrow “I’m confident that, from the Taurusconstellation,Aethra with the group of her daughters Hyades is still showing me,Elisabetta, Giorgio, Marco, Elena, Laura and Giulia the best course for our family’snavigation towards the future together with all the people who have workedwith us in these first 35 years of Aethra”.

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APPENDIX

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Appendix 1

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Aethra was officially created in 1972 and it immediately concentrated on thedevelopment and the realization of specific devices in order to be ready for theemerging market of data transmission. Up until 1976, the Company founded byGiulio Viezzoli focused its attention on systems to access the data infrastructures.In 1987 experiments for the transmission of images took off, and Aethra’semployees developed technology allowing the optimization of bandwidth, scarcecompared to what is available today, and of the analogue lines of that time. It wasGiulio Viezzoli’s idea to target image transmission, and the men who participatedin the creation of the company shared this idea to refine applications based ondata transmission that could be used by a growing number of potential users.During those years in fact, the data links were used almost exclusively bytelecommunication companies and by large international organizations.The first products specifically designed for video-communication were thosethat Aethra purchased from British Telecom, distributing them onto the Italianmarket with the appropriate technological and functional changes, alsomodifying the design. This was in 1989 and the collaboration with the Englishgroup continued up to 1993 when the London office decided to abandon thistype of solution. Aethra, on the other hand, firmly believed in this market somuch so that, thanks to the technological experience acquired, to their strategicforesightedness and to a group of young and talented engineers, in 1993 theCompany put its first device for video-communication on the market entirelydesigned and built in Ancona. In the meantime, in 1991, work had begun ondevices for ISDN lines such as the terminations and measurement tools.Towards the end of the ‘90’s, Aethra’s close and vital relationship withSip/Telecom Italia began to cool off. Up until 1998, the monopolist of nationaltelecommunication had been the main and practically sole client of Aethra, butduring that same year the management of Aethra decided to take an importantstep first to free itself of Telecom Italia and then to expand its business. This saw

the beginning of Aethra’s season of international growth that established itspresence on all the principal markets in the world.In 1999 the first solution for video-communication based on Internet protocol(IP) was ready. More precisely this was the protocol used by the Internet.As theyear 2000 was drawing nearer new equipment for the measurement and theoperation of digital networks based on xDSL technology was being refined.Following this phase of technological and business development there was areorganization of the Company. Aethra defined the spin-off of the servicecompany Aethra.net, and, in 2003, became a privately held corporation.

InternationalizationToday, either directly or through contracts with local specialized companies,Aethra is present in more than sixty countries in the world, from Canada toAustralia, from Argentina to Russia, from India to Lebanon, from Scandinavia toSouth Africa.Aethra’s offices in the world are located in Miami (the US), Mexico City, SanPaolo (Brazil), in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen (China), and London, Paris, andMadrid (Europe). In Italy, besides its main office in Ancona, the company also has

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1,6

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1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

Development in foreign revenue from 1995 to 2000

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offices in Milan and Rome.

OrganizationToday Aethra has its headquarters in Collemarino, a suburb of Ancona. Itemploys around 300 people, 150 of whom are engineers. Giulio Viezzoli is thePresident and in 2005 he assigned the position of Chief Executive Officer to hisson Marco. Every year the company invests more than 10% of its revenue (In2006 almost 70 million Euro) in research and development activities. Aethraactively participates in international committees which work to define thesector’s standard compliance both at a European and International level.Thesecommittees offer updating opportunities for the most recent technologicalinnovations and regulate the compatibility modalities of products coming fromdifferent producers all over the world. Aethra’s managers and engineersregularly participate in workshops for International Telecommunication Union(ITU), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Institute of Electrical andElectronics Engineers (IEEE), Asyncronous Transfer Mode (ATM), EuropeanTelecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), International MultimediaTelecommunications Consortium (IMTC), International Organization for theStandardization (ISO) and the DSL Forum.Since the beginning, with the objective of maintaining an organizational structurethat is flexible and capable of reacting rapidly to the changes of the market,Aethra has decided to use the network company model and outsource itsproduction that today is trusted both to Italian companies (in particularly in theAncona area) and to foreign companies, above all in Asia.

Telecommunications – Access network equipmentAethra’s core business has always been represented by termination equipmentand measuring tools for the access network, or to be precise, the copper wiresconnecting the transmission and commuter stations (circuit-switched and/orpacket) and the end user (evolved from “subscriber” to “user” and finally to“customer”).Testers for digital networks initially made up the reference market for Aethra.Starting from the ‘90s (1991) the introduction to the network of digitaltechnology ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), alongside the traditionaltechnology of analogue access POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) by TelecomItalia (then a monopoly called SIP), allowed Aethra to appeal to the maturedcompetences in the data transmission field to become one of the world leaders

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on the market of ISDN network terminations (the so-called NT1 e NT1 Plus,with only digital or also analogue POTS service interfaces respectively). TodayAethra can boast more than 5 million NT sold worldwide (with its offerpenetrating more than 60 countries) and almost 2.5 million units installed in Italy.In Italy, since 2000 the evolution of telecommunications has seen theintroduction of truly broadband technology: xDSL makes it possible, at costs(prices) compatible with a residential offer, to provide data connectivity inmegabits per second (more than 20 megabit per second in the latest versionADSL2+ currently available on the network), compared with only the 128kilobit per second offered by an ISDN connection or the few tens of kilobits persecond achievable via POTS modem! The availability of a greater transmissioncapacity at affordable costs also allowed Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) andSmall Medium Business (SMB) players to access high-profile data services(guaranteeing hundreds of kilobit per second of bandwidth, symmetricconnections), otherwise affordable only for larger companies. The enlargementof that market and the liberalization of the TLC sector in Italy (starting from the‘90s) has seen the development of a good number of competitors, who aresensitive to the agility and flexibility of their suppliers, for Telecom Italia (Fastweb,BT-Albacom, and Wind just to name some of the major ones).The alternative Operators (CLEC – Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) whowere not tied to a TDM-type legacy network for the supply of voice services(as Telecom Italia was) could benefit the most from the extension (bothwholesale and in unbundling) of broadband connections to integrate their dataconnectivity offer with voice services in packet-mode or Voice-over-ATM firstand then with Voice-over-IP today. This caused the development of a newgeneration network infrastructure, which was more flexible and really integratedin services. In general it was also more efficient compared to the overlaynetwork model (or rather distinct networks for different applications as voice,Internet connectivity, dedicated data circuits, etc.) that the ILEC (IncumbentLocal Exchange Carrier – Telecom Italia) was forced to operate (mainly, but notonly, due to the different historical phases of the development of the networkand the related services).In this context, Aethra has successfully extended its offer to the field of xDSLand NEGN (Next Generation Networks), both regarding measuring tools andmost of all data equipment (routers) and voice+data (IAD – Integrated AccessDevices), supporting and qualifying the CLECs in their entry and developmentin the SOHO/SMB markets.

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In addition, Aethra has successfully appealed to its historical technologicalknowledge in the legacy services and to its new skills in broadband networkinfrastructures to satisfy the needs of technological migration of the Incumbent(switch-off of the Frame Relay network, introduction of symmetric SHDSLsystems in access network), developing “complete” systems, or rather systemsmade both of equipment to be installed at the Customer’s facility and centralequipment, and presenting itself more as a technological partner and solutionprovider than as a “box mover”.Today Aethra can legitimately show off absolute leadership in the Italian SHDSLmarket, and presents itself as one of the main players in Europe as far as IADapparatus in xDSL technology for SOHO/SMEs are concerned. It has a productportfolio including apparatus for data and data+voice applications, SHDSL high-capacity transmission systems, central terminations and apparatus for legacyapplications on broadband infrastructure, modular testers for xDSL andapplications (IPTV).Whatever the “next technological step” might be, tomorrow’s challenge forAethra is the same as that of yesterday and today: to be a major participant inthe ongoing history of innovations and revolutions that has characterized, andalways will characterize, the path of Telecommunications. This path started 250years ago, on Febuary 17th 1753, with the publication of a proposal for what wecan define the first information transmission system through electrical signals inEdinburgh’s “Scot’s Magazine” .The author of such a fundamental publication remained unknown, except for hisinitials,“C.M”.We’d like to point that out because it’s in line with what we believeis the spirit of this field: the capacity to influence (positively, in our opinion) oursociety, through technologies that, even though fully becoming part of our everyday life, still remain invisible in their complexity.The realization and functioning ofthese technologies are based on intelligence, the innovative push, and the will toachieve concrete results that every day anonymous researchers, technicians andworkers develop to allow each and every one of us to be in the best positionto do what human beings can no longer do without (be it with a gesture, a look,a written message, a conversation or a sign on a stone). That is to communicate.

Videocommunication, full speed aheadIn 2005, the company decided to concentrate the greater part of its resourceson video-communication, not abandoning the other lines of products, but

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making the solutions of video-communication the strategic business for thepresent and future. It was exactly in this area that the most significanttechnological innovations recorded were registered. These were set up by thecompany research laboratories that back in 1987 began with the firstexperiments of television broadcasting on lines of analogical data.As early as 1989 the first video-telephones were ready, and in 1996 the initialversions of the set-top-box appeared on the market. The set-top-box made itpossible to adapt a screen, typically a television, to a terminal for video-conference. In 1999 the next step was video communication based on the IPlines. This marked the beginning of the technological evolution of Aethra’ssolutions that first developed the family with products called Vega Star, and thenthe systems that utilize plasma screens or liquid crystal screens, solutions withdouble videos in broadband.The most recent systems are those that utilize high-definition video. Now in the laboratories they are working on the so called tele-presence (in the scientific field tele-presence is a term that has a precisedefinition. It allows actions to be carried out at a distance by use of an interfacesuch as computer, satellite network or remote systems, putting the user incontact with the real existing environment. The use of advanced technologicalsystems, sensors and robot equipment, allows certain operations and bycontinuous actions obtains an immediate interaction between the operator andreal world. It not only permits the performance of actions at a distance but alsopermits the operator to sense the physical sensation of the place and as a

Main clients between 1997 and 1999

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consequence to modify the state of the things- definition taken from Wiki ArtPedia, www.wikiartpedia.org.)Today Aethra hosts a complete range of products for video communication andvideo conference, from devices for personal use, to public video-telephonyequipment like Video Payphone, right up to solutions for large auditoriums.

The marketsAlthough the video-communications market is undoubtedly the most importantfor Aethra, the company strategy is certainly not to neglect the other sectorssuch as the vertical applications, in which video-communication has animportant role like tele-medicine, video surveillance, distance learning, and tele-banking. In addition there are multimedia services such as audio and video webconferences, video streaming and the leasing of rooms equipped for videoconferences.The historic sectors of the company are still very active, and theseinclude networking with the access devices for ISDN ADSL lines, also in thevariation 2 and 2+, wireless ADSL, SHDSL, VDSL, VoIP, triple play andmeasurement equipment for the ISDN, ADSL and Wan infrastructures and E1monitoring systems.

The vertical applicationsThe specific applications for which Aethra defines solutions appropriatelystudied include: tele-medicine, distance learning, Public Administration, videosurveillance, and remote banking.Within the solutions for tele-medicine, Aethraproposes the Eykona 900 system for tele-consultation, which facilitates theexchange of clinical information between doctors, including radiological picturesand multimedia data, and can also be combined with a platform on videoconference. There are also the home care solutions, which includes the tele-video monitoring system for the diagnostics of patients discharged fromhospitals. This system allows patients under care to receive constant assistanceeven if they are in their own homes. It also makes it possible to reduce hospitalcosts, and is related to Telecomfort for non-diagnostic monitoring includingpsychological assistance. Aethra’s tele-medicine solutions today are used by theMesa project for tele-assistance on mobile vehicles of the European SpaceAgency, the Cardiology Network of the Marche region that unites the hospitaland diagnostic centers of Osimo, Camerino, Ascoli Piceno, Fermo and Anconahospital through IP networks. It is also used by the orthopedic injuries networkof Inail, by the Progetto Giubileo Marche (Marche Jubilee Project) for the

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integration of the emergency ambulance services, cardiology, radiology, neuro-radiology, and pediatric first aid. Aethra’s solutions are also utilized by theradiology network of the Italian Marine Corps., by the European programLeonardo Da Vinci for neuro-radiology and Teleregions Sun2 for cardiology tele-consultation. Abroad, Aethra’s platforms operate in the Mexican HealthDepartment’s program of tele-medicine, the psychiatric center of the Universityof Texas, in the medical center at the University of Rochester in New York, theUnited States network of tele-consultation with special attention in the field ofdermatology and in the Jackson Memorial Medical Center and the University ofMiami.A sophisticated application of tele-radiology connects the Italian Hospital ofTerni with the John Hopkins Hospital in the USA. A complex network of tele-diagnostics has been made to guarantee assistance for people who live in themost remote areas of Canada, whereas in Mexico the Universidad Anahuac hasdefined a system of mobile tele-medicine that utilizes satellite connections,thanks to Aethra’s technology.Education, distance training, and e-learning form another important sector forAethra that has created complete, interactive solutions, capable of guaranteeinghigh quality and that can also be used in context of a collaborative activity.Thisequipment is utilized by the Italian Minister of University Education and Research(Miur) for a project denominated Hsh@network, where Hsh stands for hospital,school, and home. It was designed to allow students who were eitherhospitalized or under home therapy to remain in contact with their class and soto be able to continue their scholastic and educational training.The Hsh systemuses both systems of video conference and personal computers specificallyassembled and equipped with a video camera.The Miur has also chosen Aethra’ssolutions to connect the regional scholastic offices with the central office of theministry. The services of multi-video-conference are used by the Crui, theConference of Rectors in Italian Universities, that have equipped themselveswith 75 apparatus for video-communication.Another example of the utilization of solutions for computer-assisted educationis that of the Law Department at the University of Sassari, in Sardinia. Herethey’ve created “remote centers for the irradiation of didactics” with the scopeof helping students who have a problem traveling to reach the traditionalcampus site to follow the courses. For this reason video conference units havebeen set up in La Maddalena, Tempio Pausania, Budoni, Alà dei Sardi, Ghilarza,and Elini. Also in Sardinia, Aethra has furnished the technological infrastructures

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for the project m@rte. This project has the objective of connecting 543 schoolsin the region by video-conference in order to organize new teaching methodsand to further involve the institutes situated in the farthest areas. A differentproject, scuola@bardi, has involved students living in Bardi,Varsi and Bore whoare registered in the high schools of Fornovo, Borgotaro, and Bedonia (localitiessituated in mountainous areas of the province of Parma). Here too the idea wasto reduce the necessity of commuting by using equipment to support teachingactivities, video-communication and suitable telecommunication infrastructures.In order to respond better to the actual needs of the school, to improve accessto teaching, facilitate communication between teachers students and families, toimprove the administration of the institutes, integrate the computerizedequipment and Internet with those more traditionally used for teaching, to favorthe diffusion of the computer culture and, not least, to make it possible forstudents with a handicap to access school courses, Aethra has developed aspecially designed solution called E-student. E-student combines all thecomponents of technology and communication necessary to give a concreteanswer to teachers and students. Such a solution is part of a wider project of atechnological school that foresees the realization of special classrooms equippedwith personal computers, video-communication systems, access to broad-bandInternet, and the use of multimedia contents.In the Public Administration sector, Aethra presents itself as technologicalpartner capable of providing products, services, and necessary assistance.Amongits achievements, there are video communication infrastructures for the ItalianInland Revenue Office, EiVideoCom system for the Italian army and aeronauticaldivision.They have also provided a video-communication service combining the fixedand mobile terminals to support the activities of the medical assistance of theemergency ambulance number that utilizes wireless lines and satelliteconnections.Another important market for Aethra is that of video-surveillance. Also in thisfield the company has defined solutions equipped with video cameras, sensorsand control systems, all designed to guarantee the maximum safety andoperative efficiency.The solutions also include cryptographic technology for theprotection of information and of privacy. There are solutions for facialidentification ideal for environments such as airports, stations, public buildings,embassies, courts, banks.There are anti-terrorism solutions capable of identifyingabandoned objects, and detecting sparks of a fire, controling parking lots and

traffic with the use of specific technology which can identify license platenumbers and act as anti-intrusion systems. The applications are numerous,ranging from environment control, anti-crime, public order, control of buildings,university campuses, subway stations, freeways, prevention of landslides, andstadiums. Aethra’s videosurveillance systems are operative within Acea forcontrolling industrial constructions, Nato for the military zones, and variousinstitutes for surveillance, such as City Administrations, and police headquarters.

Aethra.netAethra.net officially began in 1994 as a division of Aethra specialized in thedistribution of multimedia services and distance collaboration, that is to sayaudio-conferences, web-conferences, the leasing of equipped rooms, distributionin streaming of multimedia contents. Amongst its clients Aethra.net has 36% ofthe major 52 industrial Italian groups quoted on the Stock Market anddistributes its services with the trademark Meetin. Today Aethra is the fourthproducer in the world of video-communication systems according to what wasreported by the market analysis groups Telespan Publishing Corporation andWainhouse Research LLC.

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San Paolo (Brazil)

Mexico City (Mexico)Hong Kong (China)

Shenzhen (China)

Beijing (China)Paris (France)Madrid (Spain)

Miami (USA)

Overseas branches in 1999

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Appendix II

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Video-communication as we know it today began to catch on in the late ‘80sthanks to the wide penetration of ISDN network and to the definition by theInternational Telecommunication Union (ITU) of the series H.320 standards.Thanks to these standards, a terminal built today can interoperate with one builtten years ago and terminals built in Europe can connect with terminals built inAmerica or in Asia.The ISDN network is a globally available digital “circuit-switched” commutationnetwork. It provides connectivity from 64 kilobit per second up to 2 Megabit persecond (a whole primary access or PRI – Primary Rate Interface) with 64 kilobitper second increases.Whether it is used or not, the bandwidth remains availablefor all the duration of the connection.The transmission delay is very low and theerror margin negligible. For these characteristics, the ISDN network isparticularly suitable for the transportation of audiovisual fluxes that are highlysensitive both to delay, that might compromise the interactivity of thecommunication, and line quality that influences the intelligibility and fidelity of theaudio and the quality of video.The drawbacks of ISDN are represented mainly by two critical elements: per-minute- and per-channel fees that are typical of the circuit-switched networks,and the necessity to “aggregate” and synchronize several channels at 64 kilobitper second to achieve the desired bandwidth.The first-generation systems were very expensive and had quite disappointingperformances, with low-quality jerkily-moving video (also due to the prevalent

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use of 128 kbit per second connections), echo, and frequent incompatibilitybetween terminals of different producers.The objective to allow the use of Video-communication first on local networks(LAN), and then the huge success of the Internet afterwards, motivated theindustry to define a Standard series also for the Video-communication on packetnetworks; so came the “H.323 series”, whose first version dates back to 1996.New regulations (H.450 series) define a whole new range of supplementaryservices that don’t have an equivalent for the H.320 systems. In the H.323architecture a network element called the ‘gatekeeper’ was introduced. Withthis element terminals must register and it can be used to authenticate the users,authorize calls or not, and regulate the use of bandwidth, among other things.Recently the SIP protocol has also started to gain popularity in the Video-communication systems. SIP was developed by the IETF (Internet EngineeringTask Force) for VoIP applications and was later extended to cover otherapplications (presence and instant messaging, video, etc.).The IP protocol has the undisputed advantage of being independent from thepeculiarities of the physical network it relies on. An IP “connection” (not acorrect term for a packet network) usually crosses several different networks.The user doesn’t have to worry about what kind of access they’re using, whetherit’s narrowband (phone line, ISDN), broadband (xDSL) or wireless (for exampleWiFi). However, they should be aware of the kind of service they can expect(bandwidth, delay, etc.). To continue speaking of benefits, a single line may beeasily shared among several applications (for example Video-conference, Webnavigation, e-mail downloading) and also among several users, which isimpossible with circuit-switched networks.The drawback of IP networks is that generally they don’t guarantee the qualityof service.The jitter and the rate of packet loss (mainly due to the congestionon the router) may vary greatly depending on traffic conditions.The correctionof errors through re-transmission takes too high a toll on delay to beconsidered. In spite of the progress in error concealment techniques, if thequality of the line drops below a certain level (more or less 3% of lost packets),communication becomes a problem. If it’s true that it is possible to have a high-quality IP delivery, obviously paying for the service, in some regions or for certainconnections the “universal” level of connectivity provided by the ISDN is yet toarrive. The Video-conference on IP networks suffers also from other problems,for example the difficulty to cross firewalls and NAT and the underlying lowersecurity, which it’s not possible to linger on for reasons of space.

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It’s important, however, to consider that, compared to a circuit-switchednetwork like the ISDN, an IP network is less efficient.The overhead of the packettransmission compared to that of the circuit transmission can be estimatedaround 20%, which means 300 Kbit/s on ISDN require about 360 kbit/s on anIP network to have the same service.Today the majority of Video-communication systems of a certain level are multi-standard, therefore able to operate both on ISDN (standard H.320) and on IPnetwork (standard H.323 and SIP). This avoids having to pass through a“gateway”, the network entity which makes the necessary protocol conversionswhen trying to establish a session between terminals on different networks.

Audio-video technologyBandwidth is expensive and video signal requires a lot of it. A non-compressedPAL signal absorbs around 300 Megabits/second, and the main challenge for aVideo-conference system is to compress the video signal so as to use easilyavailable and not expensive bandwidths. The use of a 300 kilobit/s connectionrequires a compression factor of one thousand.To achieve this every possible excess of information and degradation of qualityand space resolution (details of the image) and of time resolution (movementfluidity) is taken advantage of.With the recent introduction of high definition, a terminal can transmit andreceive up to 30 frames per second at the resolution of 1280x720 pixels inprogressive mode (720p30 format).At the current state of the art, an HD signal requires more than 1 Mbit/s, thestandard television resolution (equal to the 4CIF, 704x576 pixel format) needsmore than 384 kbit/s, the “Common Intermediate Format “(CIF, 352x288 pixel)between 64 and 384 kbit/s while below 64 kbit/s the QCIF is preferable (aquarter of CIF, 176x144 pixel) or even SQCIF (“Sub QCIF”, 128x96 pixel).Given a certain codec model and having defined space resolution, timeresolution depends on the available bandwidth and on the movement in theentry sequence. If the bandwidth is scarce and the codec inefficient, it might bethat the quality of the frames transmitted each second is good when this is notuseful (like with low-movement sequences) and drops when in fact it should beincreasing (scenes with a lot of movement). The “frame per second” criteriadoesn’t help much in letting the user understand the quality of a codec becauseit might refer just to the decoder; standards leave complete freedom to aterminal to transmit anything, the only condition being that it is decodable by the

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recipient.Modern Video-conference systems use the standard ITU H.264 for video coding(also known as MPEG4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding), successor of H.263 eH.261. Developed thanks to a joint project between ITU and ISO/MPEG H.264,it allows a significant improvement in quality compared to predecessors H.263and MPEG4. This means there is a 30% to 50% bandwidth saving with the sameperformance. Compared to MPEG2 the advantage is even more significant andsome speculate that in the future there might be a television channeltransmitted at about 1 Mbit/s with the same quality today provided by a satelliteservice at 4Mbit/s.Still, we have to underline that it is not the standard that makes quality, but howwell that standard is implemented, together with computing resources and levelof peripherals. If a cheap camera is connected to the best codec it will alwaysdeliver disappointing results, and the best camera with a high availability ofbandwidth won’t be sufficient if the codec is badly designed or on an unsuitableplatform. If there has been enormous progress made in terms of reduction ofbit-rate, the same can’t be said about delay because the predictive interframecodification, which adjusts for movement and is still the base of H.264, is anintrinsic production mechanism. Jitter remains an issue, mainly at low bit rates.That’s why it’s important that the network doesn’t add too much of its own.Passing through gateways and MCUs has additional side effects, especially if thesignal is re-coded (to create the “continuous presence” effect) or trans-coded.Different codecs may be used for audio transmission, with less employment ofbandwidth and a performance similar or superior to that registered in thetraditional telephone lines.The audio delay is always significantly lower to that ofvideo but normally the synchronization of signals is required (lip sync) and soaudio must be artificially delayed.During the years the audio technology evolved from 4 kHz (phone bandwidth)to 7kHz (wideband), then to 14 kHz (superwideband) and today the ITU isstandardizing a codec at 20 kHz (full band).The echo, created by the coupling of speakers and microphones, becomes moreannoying when the jitter between the useful signal and reflected signal increases.In Video-conference systems delay is such that a good echo eraser is needed.The use of array of microphones and highly sophisticated numerical processingtechniques allow the active talker to be localized, make the microphone systemdirective and to automatically position the camera in the direction of the audiosource (“speaker tracking”).This avoids the necessity of manual intervention or

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the use of a long shot before a crowded assembly room.Each system may have largely different abilities like maximum transfer rate,variety of available audio and video codec, maximum decodable space and timeresolution, management of data conference or not, and so on. Once the call hasbeen completed, but before the audiovisual session begins, the terminalsexchange information about their features (“capability exchange”) so that eachis sure to transmit only what the other can decode.

Data CommunicationIn many cases it is necessary to exchange documents or make remotepresentations in order to make a distance meeting effective. In first-generationsystems the only tool available was the stative, with which it was possible to takea document or slide and transmit its content in the form of video signal, usuallyreplacing the one in the conference room. In the following years, a series ofprotocols (series T.120) became standardized. These defined, in a multipointenvironment, data applications such as the electronic board, remotepresentation or the sharing of generic applications.These applications can be inthe Video-communication terminal or in a Personal Computer connected to itthrough standard interfaces (serial, Ethernet).The use of T.120 technology never became universal for a series of reasons,including complexity, insufficient efficiency on IP networks and compatibility issuesamong producers.To avoid its use, today’s systems can either convert an electronicpresentation in the form of a sequence of fixed images that are then transmittedas a part of the coded video flux, or directly capture the video exit (XGA) of aPC and code it as a “special” video flux, with high resolution but low frame rate.The capacity to operate two displays is fundamental for a full availability of thedata component. One of these displays is for the video in the remote room andthe other for the graphics. In the case of recording from a stative or transmissionin XGA format, the operation of two displays requires the terminals and themultipoint units to be able to simultaneously manage two video fluxes. Thisfeature is included in the most modern equipment and was recently fullystandardized (Racc. H.239, May ‘03).

Multipoint Video-communicationIn order to allow participants spread out in multiple locations to take part alltogether in a Video-communication it is necessary to use equipment called

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“Multipoint Control Unit” (MCU). Every single terminal connects in point-pointmode to the MCU. For example in a multi communication session in fourdifferent rooms the MCU carries out the following functions:• it sends the sum of audio signals of room 2,3 and 4 to the first room, the sum

of audio signals from rooms 1,3 and 4 to the second room, and so on. In thisway each room does not receive its own audio which would be perceived asa strong echo.

If the communication is “voice switched”, it transmits the video signal of theactive talker to every room, whereas the signal of the previous talker is sent tothe active talker. As an option it can also transmit the video of one selectedroom to every room.If the conference is in a “Continuous Presence” mode, the MCU sends the videosignal of several rooms composed as a mosaic in a single picture. In our example,every room could occupy a quarter of the display thus letting everyone seeeach other, even if at a low resolution. Sophisticated MCUs can allow morevideo combinations, a useful feature in crowded communications when not allthe rooms can be fitted in a single picture, and use a higher resolution for thevideo transmission compared to the video signals received. If it supports DataCommunication it transmits to every room the traffic going towards it.In more costly equipment other options can be supported such as:• Asymmetric modes: for example. a terminal sends audio on narrow band and

receives audio on broadband;• Transcoding: should a terminal transmit Video H.264 but one or more

recipients only have the old codec H.263, the MCU converts as necessary.• Different resolutions: for example some conference terminals support HD,

whereas others only SD, and others even lower resolutions (old terminals thatprocess CIF, mobile terminals that process QCIF or sub-QCIF)

• Different Bandwidths: the MCU adapts the “bit rate” transmitted to thecharacteristics of each link.

• Hybrid conferences: if participants are on mixed networks (for example someare on ISDN, others on IP) the MCU integrates gateway functions.

Apparatus typesVideo-communication systems are divided into two major categories:“room” or“group” systems like Rollabout and Set Top, and systems for personal use, likevideo telephones and Desktop.Rollabouts are high-performance systems which are highly integrated, mobile(explaining the name), equipped with a large display and a motorized camerawith a system for the automated framing of the speaker, and accurate audio sub-

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system. Set Top systems are compact and require an external display, giving anextra something to larger systems in terms of wide choice of options,expandability, rich external interfacing and so on.Video telephones are meant for personal use and have the advantage that theyare simple to use. Desktop systems have a reduced cost and can be integratedwith PCs.Compared to ten years ago, systems today are less expensive, easier to use andmanage, and offer higher performances. Nevertheless video-communication isstill a niche technology, mainly used in work environments to hold meetings withseveral participants. This situation can partly be ascribed to a lack ofunderstanding, especially in the early days, of the human factors.

Human factors and motivations of adoptionVideo is certainly an intrusive technology, above all when compared withtelephone conversation. It is mainly for this reason that up to now efforts tomake the consumer market take off have failed, as well as the high cost and thedisappointing quality. To use video the user must be motivated, either by workneeds or by psychological or sentimental reasons.Video sessions should not bea permanent substitute for the audio call, but a plus for communication to beused as necessary when it is believed convenient.That is why the set top is moresuitable than the video telephone, since the location (usually the living-room onthe TV set) and the large display mark it as an object to be used when one is“ready” for the video.Also in the work environment, a lengthy experience has allowed a betterdefinition for what the user perceives as technological limitations:• No opportunity for socializing, both in a formal way like shaking hands, and

useful to intensify interpersonal relationships like having lunch with theconversational partners;

• The difficulty to create the right “atmosphere”, which is attributable to the lackof multi-sensory appeal;

• The fact that the conversation is not very natural for technological reasonssuch as delay, video quality, echo;

• The environmental conditions are not ideal (acoustic level, light, view angle);• The complexity of use, especially when compared to the phone.Audio is a critical component of video-communication experiences. Bad qualityaudio makes people even less tolerant towards possible video imperfections.User feeling may be influenced by subtle factors, for example the difficulty of avisual contact due to the placement of the camera.

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Further to the above mentioned reasons, an understandable mistrust towardseverything that’s new and that can alter one’s habits is what makes the usertypically react at first with resistance. They try, if possible, to avoid theexperience.Traditional limiting factors have also been the initial investment andthe operational costs, compared to mostly indirect benefits. Today the cost ofboth equipment and connectivity is no more a deterrent; integration in terminalsof multipoint capacity allows the management of small multi-conferenceswithout having to use a service provider. The drawback of having to havespecialized staff to operate the systems is less important due to the fact that thenew generation of management systems automate many functions (forexample, a conference can be completely launched and controlled remotely)and terminal use is more and more within the reach of non-skilled users.The success of video conference in a company can be facilitated following somesimple rules: taking care of the environmental aspects, avoiding rooms that aretoo reverberating and reflecting objects, paying attention to light and protectingfrom external noise; choosing a display of adequate dimensions (a 15 degreeangle of sight corresponds approximately to real dimensions, that’s why it’sadvisable not to fall below 6 degrees), positioning the camera so as to facilitatevisual contact (according to recent studies this visual contact is perceivedasymmetrically, so the camera should be positioned above the display, centrally,and so that the visual angle between local user, camera and remote user on thedisplay doesn’t exceed 5 degrees), putting the microphones at the right distanceand far from noise sources, using a band of around 384 kbit/s for professional-quality conferences and making sure, in the case of IP transmission, that thenetwork provides an adequate quality of service, and always allowing systemsthat support two displays, one for remote video and the other for the graphicpart, even if data use is not initially planned.

Video-communication ApplicationsInitially used for executive meetings in organizations that could afford expensivetechnology, today Video communication is a tool used in a diversity of contextsand by a growing number of people.For many companies it is a common tool for commercial and marketingoperations such as analyzing the market situation with the sales force,brainstorming to design new commercial strategies, planning and training duringthe launch of new products and customer support in post-selling.Through video conference all the people who tele-work can reduce the feeling

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of isolation and improve the effectiveness of their contact with colleagues.A society of modern information requires an unprecedented level of knowledgeboth in quantity and quality. Distance learning facilitates the access to knowledgeand can satisfy the individual needs and potentiality of learning.Video-conferencemakes synchronous and interactive distance learning possible, meaning that thefruition of contents happens simultaneously to delivery. The teacher andelectronic board are visible at the same time, re-creating the conditions of aclassroom, and bidirectional communication with students makes it possible forteaching to be based on dialog. The effectiveness of this basis for teaching hasbeen well known since the time of Socrates.According to a study published in December 1999 by the “National Center forEducation Statistics”, in 1997/1998 a third of academic institutions in the USAoffered e-learning courses. Among these, on average 54% used Video-communication, with the public sector leading the way (78% of use for the 4-year courses and 62% for the 2-year courses). Tele medicine allows thedistribution of services to be de-centralized, even when there’s a shortage offully qualified staff, the reduction in operational costs, and provides low-costhome care.Video conference systems are used to watch over streets, ports and airports,industrial facilities, stores and homes. In courtroom, testimonies can be made atdistance, avoiding security issues and costs associated with transferring prisonersor witnesses. Portable video conference equipment is used more and more byreporters, above all in war scenarios where the use of alternative means ofcommunication is an issue.

What’s in store in the future?In the short run, for group systems used on broadband networks, thetechnological evolution promises audio/video quality similar to the one you canget today with the satellite television receivers, management of multiple videofluxes, better multi point support, and more information protection.The overalluser experience will be improved and new applications will be made easier : forexample, the transmission of angiography in real time for diagnostic use.If the personal use of video conference, both at work and at home, hasn’t takenoff so far, things could change in the near future. The growing popularity ofinstant messaging applications in the business environment, the growingcomputing power of PCs and the availability of complete platforms for Webcollaboration (for example, Microsoft Office Communications Server) will turn

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the integration of text and audiovisual communication into common practice .Therefore the right conditions will arise for a growing user familiarity with video,both at home and at work, and for its implicit acceptance as a means ofcommunication part of every day life.Young people are much more open and used to new multi-media technologythan their parents. If the price allows it we can foresee the success of mobileVideo-communication among teenagers and, for the first time ever, there will bea generation which will have grown up using video communication.Thanks to the dissemination of broadband networks also for domestic use(ADSL, cable modem) it will be more and more common to offer videoconference services to the masses through multi functional terminals (data, voiceand video) and integrated offer bundles to overcome those cost and qualitybarriers that in the past hindered the take-off of this market.