Elon Ganor
| Elon A. Ganor | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1950 Geneva, Switzerland |
| Residence | Israel |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, artist |
Elon A. Ganor (born 1950) is an Israeli entrepreneur and artist known mainly for his role as one of the world's first VoIP pioneers. He served as Chairman and CEO of VocalTec Ltd (Nasdaq CALL), the company behind the creation of “Internet Phone”, the world's first commercial software product that enabled voice communication over the internet, known initially as “Internet Telephony” and later as VoIP. He is also known for several controversial business campaigns and is often described as a 'business predator'.
Elon Ganor was born in Geneva Switzerland in 1964, grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel where he graduated from Tel Aviv University Sackler Medical school and got an MD in 1975.
After years of practicing medicine Ganor shifted his energy to the creation of technology related companies. His first company was Virovahl S,A- a Swiss-based biotechnology company that he founded in 1987 with a group of Swedish Virologists, the company's laboratory was located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Virovahl SA, developed the world's first HIV synthetic peptide based on diagnostic test. Under his guidance as President of Virovahl, the test was licensed exclusively to Pharmacia AB from Uppsala Sweden (Later merged with Upjohn).
In 1990 Ganor joined forces with Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty who formed 6 months earlier VocalTec LTd in Israel. Cohen and Haramaty developed and manufactured a PC sound card (SpeechBoard TM) that was sold mainly to the local visually impaired community in Israel with a unique Text to Speech software enabling blind people to use a computer in the Hebrew language. Since that market was limited, as VocalTec CEO and Chairman, Ganor decided to shift the company's focus to software. In 1993 VocalChat was born, a software that enabled voice communication from one PC to another on a local and wide area network. The software was developed by a group of developers including Ofer Kahana (later the founder of Kagoor that was sold to Juniper), Elad Sion (Served in Israel TOP 8200 Intelligence army unit, died young in a car accident), Ofer Shem Tov (A software developer in Israel) and others. The software was presented in Atlanta in May 1993 at the Network InterOp trade show. In 1994 support for Internet Protocol was added and on Friday, February 10, 1995 “Internet Phone“ was launched with a near full page Wall Street Journal article by WSJ Boston Correspondent Bill Bulkeley, “Hello World! Audible chats On the Internet” was the header.
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