The core technology to be commercialised by Cohesive Data is a data compression technology for XML files that reduces their size to about one tenth and enables the compressed data to be indexed, searched and updated - without first needing to be expanded.

NICTA has already commercialised the technology in the form of an iPhone app, TiniWiki, (www.tiniwiki.com) that compresses the entire content of Wikipedia to a size that enables it to be stored, searched and updated on the phone, reported by iTWire in May 2009.
Cohesive's aim in promoting the technology to US mobile operators is that they will deploy it to enable users to download a wide range of content, such as news feeds, that will be kept up to date on the phone, generally by downloading when the phone is in a WiFi zone, or at off peak times.

NICTA has provided seed funding and will take equity in the company in return for providing software and intellectual property.

Dr Raymond Wong, who led the NICTA project team that developed the software, will join Cohesive as its CTO along with three members of his team. R&D will continue to be undertaken in Australia from new offices in the Australian Technology Park in Redfern.

Cohesive is NICTA's fifth spin-off since its formation in 2002, the others being Audinate, 7-ip, Monitoring Division and Open Kernel Labs. OK Labs has develop a micro kernel OS for cellphones that has been installed in 500 million devices worldwide.

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Cohesive Data has been founded by entrepreneurs/investors Tim Sullivan, Todd Viegut and Peter Vroom. Sullivan, who will be executive chairman of Cohesive Data, said: "We feel this is a great fit within the carriers' needs for delivering large volumes of information to an ever-growing mobile market."

Sullivan has a track record in startups and large corporations. In 2004 he founded CebaTech, a company that provided compiler-based tools to enable efficient hardware device designs. From 1998 to 2003 he was GM, COO and then president of optical networking at Lucent Technologies. In 1993 he founded Connectware, an ATM applications company. Before that he spent eight years as a VP at Nortel.

Vroom has been building technology businesses since 1970 when he started a computer service bureau, CMC. He is a fellow of the Australian Computer Society and mentors early stage technology business founders and CEOs.

Viegut has a 23 year track record of bringing advanced technologies to market. He was the president of WAN optimisation company, NetPriva, based in South Australia, before its sale in 2008 to a US based Expand Networks. Prior to joining NetPriva be was the COO of Adelaide based data management company Rocksoft, sold to US based ADIC in 2006s for $63m.