Tag: military technology

Guest post by Phillip Fine, Jerusalem-based writer/editor.  There’s commercialization of military know-how and then there’s Israel’s commercialization of military know-how. Take mPrest Systems Inc., a software maker headquartered in Petah Tikva, a city of 231,000 roughly 11 kilometres east of Tel Aviv. That company is selling the software that Israel used in Iron Dome – its system for shooting down Hamas rockets — to electric power utilities to help them prevent blackouts. Specifically, by polling sensors, the software allows an electric utility to monitor its equipment. The utility can then better predict when a transformer might pop, thus allowing for repairs before the electricity goes off. One customer, the New York Power Authority, has already used the software to pinpoint transformers that it didn’t even know were problematic, says Natan Barak, mPrest’s CEO, who spoke to Media Line at the OurCrowd global investor summit in Jerusalem Feb. 16. mPrest hopes to sell the software to other electric utilities in the U.S., as well as to power companies in Asia. In fact, the company is customizing its product so utilities...