By Allan Maurer
ATLANTA—Some time ago, Paul L.H. Olson’s wife renewed her driver’s license using a Visa card, and three months later received a $4,000 bill from a Dallas, Texas rental car company, even though neither he nor his wife had been there. “Someone breached that state’s system,” says Olson, CEO of nuBridges. That sort of security lapse is what nuBridges’ software and services are designed to prevent, he says.
The company’s software and managed services protect sensitive data at rest and in transit, internally within a company or externally. Its encryption, key management, managed file transfer and B2B integration solutions are used to comply with security mandates, encrypting millions of credit cards, and exchanging billions of dollars in B2B transactions and enable countless business-critical file transfers.
The company focuses on a handful of vertical enterprise sales to the financial/insurance, hospitality, state and local government and healthcare sectors. It is looking at expanding to include higher education.
The 120-employee nuBridges has 3,000 customers, including Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, Timberland, American Eagle Outfitters, Belk, Bon Ton, John Deere, Wachovia, Sun Trust, AIG, CheckFree, Bank of America and Verizon.
Founded in 2001 and funded primarily by C. Tycho Howle, chairman, nuBridges also took money from VC firms for acquisitions, but is not currently looking for additional backing, says Olson. The company is already cash flow positive, he says. The company has a line of credit but doesn’t need venture capital right now, although it may seek it to fund future acquisitions, he notes.
Howle founded Harbinger Computer Services in March 1983. Tycho grew Harbinger to become a world-class e-Commerce firm with more than 1,000 employees, 40,000 active customers, and annual revenues exceeding $155 million. Tycho served as both Chairman and CEO for most of his 17-year tenure with Harbinger, and led the company through its many phases of growth including an IPO in 1995.
Olson was a founding executive officer of Sterling Commerce Inc., a global e-commerce player, which sold to SBC Communications Inc. for almost $4 billion in 2000. Olson also served the Minnesota Vikings as a front office executive and was an early innovator in the use of information technology for game analysis and strategy.
Following the Sterling sale, Olson was in Florida when Howle called him. “We were formerly intense competitors, but had deep respect for each other,” he tells TechJournal South.
“He said, ‘I want to create a company that can really take the friction out of B2B and B2C e-commerce.” The original notion was to help move electronic information efficiently and securely and grew from there.
One of the problems with security at point of sale locations, he says, is that “You walk in and buy something and use your credit card. It gets stored on a device somewhere in their system. If you go to the same store in another state, it gets stored on another device. Every time it is recorded, it creates vulnerability.
“Our software encrypts it and has a password on top of the encrypted data. You secure it in a much more centralized fashion, which is a way not to have too many points of vulnerability.”
The company licenses its software and maintenance services to large companies for from $75,000 to $300,000, averaging from $100,000 to $150,000, while its exchange gateway service goes for $50,000 to $150,000.
Olson says the down economy thus far has not impacted nuBridges adversely. “If you want to be in the software business, ours is a good one to be in,” he says. “Everyone wants to keep the bad guys out and the good guys in.”
He adds that “I think it’s a great opportunity to acquire companies. A lot of people are looking for a liquidity event. Their capital sources are drying up and they’re motivated to sell.”
He also says he wants nuBridges “Mind share to be greater than our market share. We’re working with the Gartners and the Aberdeens and making sure they understand what we have. We’re going to appropriate shows and panels and forums to get the word out. You have to get mind share to get market share.”
On the Web: www.nubridges.com
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