Team & History

Bob Van Andel is the founder and CEO of Allegro. Bob has been designing and building embedded systems and communications protocols for more than 20 years. Prior to founding Allegro, Bob was Vice President of Engineering at Avatar Technologies and held a variety of technical positions at Data General, building specialist systems for automation and control applications. Like Bob, his team consists of a seasoned group of engineers and business leaders whose broad background gives them the depth of experience that underpins the singular attention to quality and problem solving at the heart of Allegro’s culture. Allegro also strives to be an active member of the technology development community that it serves, by participation in industry and trade organizations and running an active partnership program.

Allegro Software Development Corporation was founded at the beginning of 1996 with intent of leveraging standard Internet applications technologies in the management of networked devices. The initial RomPager offerings, designed specifically for embedded applications, set the standard in the emerging web management market with features such as compression for pages and images, support for the latest HTML and HTTP standards, flexible security models and flexible file system support. Customers were quick to realize that such tools supported the quick development of sophisticated management applications and an ability to rapidly deliver consistent cross-platform solutions. By leveraging a standard browser as the device application interface, the requirement for developing, distributing and maintaining custom device management client software was largely eliminated, leading to a sea change in the design and packaging of this type of system.

From 1997 to 1999, Allegro delivered several extensions to its product line including version and option updates to RomPager and the new RomMailer and RomPOP email agents for email based status/alert reports or delivery of new software revisions by email. RomWebClient was added as a general purpose HTTP object retrieval toolkit for embedded devices and RomDNS provided the ability to perform a variety of name-based and address-based queries to Domain Name Servers. These focused technologies addressed unmet needs in the marketplace and expanded the range of capabilities that Allegro’s customers could provide in their designs. To extend this range of management options, Allegro also added RomCLI, providing a command line capability, and a compact implementation of protocols necessary to enable TLS, SSL and SSH secured management transactions for embedded devices.

As an early response to the growing interest in Machine-To-Machine web services, in September 1999, Allegro launched RomXML, the first XML Framer/Parser specifically designed for the embedded marketplace. With a memory footprint of around 10Kb, Allegro made it practical to harness the power and sophistication of XML based web transactions within a system of embedded devices. Building on this technological base in September 2000, Allegro announced the RomUPNP family of toolkits (later renamed to RomPlug), which are small memory footprint implementations of the UPnP™ core technologies. This growing use of more involved multi-protocol transactions at the device-to-device level is reflected in the recent marketing of UPnP based media extender devices. To underscore its committment to this space and to help expand the use of these standard technologies, Allegro is now also marketing the Allegro Media Server - a software application to link personal computers that use the Apple iTunes software with the world of networked UPnP digital media players.

Today, Allegro is an active member of the UPnP Forum - an industry initiative designed to enable simple and robust connectivity among stand-alone devices and PCs from many different vendors. As a group, the UPnP Forum is leading the way to an interconnected lifestyle.

Allegro is also a participant in the activities of the Digital Living Network Alliance (DNLA). DNLA companies are working to turn the vision of a networked home into a reality for consumers around the world. This vision integrates the Internet, mobile and broadcast products through a seamless interoperable network.

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