Archive for the ‘Virginia’ Category
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
 CHARLOTTE, NC – Welsh Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a private equity firm, and Peak 10′s executive management have acquired a majority stake in the company. Financial details were not disclosed.
Selling shareholders include majority owner Seaport Capital, a New York-based private equity firm and McCarthy Capital, an Omaha, Neb.-based private equity fund.
Peak 10’s existing management team, led by Co-Founder, President and CEO David Jones will continue to operate the business.
Jones said, “Our partnership with Welsh Carson enables Peak 10 to continue increasing the scale of our business to meet the high demand for data center infrastructure and related managed services. Our strategic focus remains intact but our resources now position us to more rapidly extend our geographic footprint, strengthen our team and further accelerate our managed services and cloud offerings.”
Peak 10 has managed a path of steady and consistent growth achieved through expansion in the greenfield markets of Jacksonville, FL.; Charlotte, NC.; Tampa, FL. and Raleigh, NC, and through acquisitions of established data center companies in Louisville, KY; Nashville, TN.; Richmond, VA and, most recently, Fort Lauderdale, FL.
In 2007 and early 2008, Peak 10 opened greenfield data centers in Atlanta, Ga. and Cincinnati, Ohio respectively. Over the last two years Peak 10 has completed construction of additional facilities in five of its markets to meet customer growth and demand.
The transaction is expected to close in early October.
Tags: Acquisitions, Atlanta, Charlotte, FL, Fort Lauderdale, GA, KY, Louisville, Nahsville, NC, Peak 10, Raleigh, Richmond, TN, VA, Welsh Carson
Posted in Acquisitions, Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Other SE, Potomac, Tennessee, Virginia | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
ARLINGTON, VA – FortiusOne, a developer of web tools that transform large amounts of data into visual formats, has named Frank Moyer new CEO.
Previously, Moyer was CEO of EzGov until CACI acquired the firm in 2009.
The company raised $4.9 million of a targeted $5.9 million offering in July, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
It raised a $5.45 million B round from Walker’s Invetement Fund II, SBIC, Spero’s New Market’s Growth Fund, Chart Venture Partners and In-Q-Tel and Frank Bonsal, a New Enterprise Associates founding partner.
Founded in 2005, the company set out to change the way organizations visualize and analyze data for real-time problem solving.
The company says devastating worldwide events such as the London bombings and Hurricane Katrina proved that legacy data analysis tools and techniques which used dated, static location information were no longer effective means for data sharing, risk mitigation or crisis response.
So, the company says, it launched GeoIQ, the first completely web-based location analysis platform, with the capability to unleash a world of dynamic location information that had previously been locked in proprietary databases.
Fortius One was one of TechJournal South’s Tech 50 companies to watch in 2008.
Tags: Arlington, data visualization, FortiusOne, Frank Moyer, IT, Virginia
Posted in Government/Defense, IT, Internet/New Media, People, Potomac, Virginia | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
By Allan Maurer
 MCLEAN, VA – If you spend much of your time, effort and money working on your web site’s landing page, you’re probably missing a major opportunity to capture more attention from your visitors. So says Kelley McDonald, director of Information Architecture with Navigation Arts, a McLean, VA-based web design and development company.
“Most traffic goes to content pages within your site,” McDonald tells us. “Only 15 percent goes to the landing page.” Nevertheless, it can be difficult to get clients to listen when he tells them that, McDonald admits.
“Three quarters of the doors through which people come into your site are content pages. You’re missing a big opportunity by not thinking about how to serve people where they are actually landing,” he says. “Think of Google as your homepage. People experience you through your content pages and they don’t march through your site as if they’re in a house.”
If our own analytics are any guide, McDonald is right on with his. Half our traffic comes from search engines and almost all goes to content pages rather than our landing page.
Design from the inside out
How do you take advantage of knowing people arrive at content pages rather than a landing page?
“Design from the inside out,” says McDonald. “Ask yourself how you can build on the question that brought them to the content? It’s important to have highly relevant links to other content that builds on the user’s question.”
That doesn’t mean services that automatically provide links to somewhat relevant content, he adds.
He also recommends avoiding “happy talk.” It’s all the “Hi, welcome to our site, we’re here to server your needs,” type of copy so prevalent on business sites. “It’s a highly ignorable block of text that people quickly gloss over,” says McDonald.
More technically, he also suggests separating content from its display, creating relationships between objects and systematically relating pages.
It’s not magic
There will always be a large percentage of users who come to a site for one item and leave, he notes. “We don’t think you’ll ever catch more than 35 percent (to click on other content).” But the idea is to “Move the dial closer to what you want.”
“The key thing is relevancy. It’s more about the content than technique.” Eye-tracking studies show where people look and where they don’t, but “It all comes down to content people need or want and what’s relevant to them,” McDonald says. “It’s about taking that extra step to connect things. I don’t think it’s magic.”
Treat ads as content
The same concept works regarding advertising on the web, he says. “Advertising online is in many ways a blind spot for people. Studies show people avoid it if it looks the least bit like advertising. Eye-tracking shows them avoiding ad spaces.”
Making ads more relevant and more digital increases the chances that people will engage with the ad,” he points out.
“It’s about personalization and localization,” he adds. “If you can serve up ads related to the user and what his questions are (that brought him to the content), and if they’re treated and shaped more like content, they work better. If they’re shaped like print ads, no amount of trickery will work.”
“The user experience is the bread and butter of what we do at Navigation Arts,” McDonald says. The 70-employee company includes 19 information architects.
McDonald is one of more than 50 Internet and digital media experts who will converge on Tysons Corner, VA, Oct. 18 for the first Digital East event.
Diversified DC market good to the company
McDonald tells us the Navigation Arts founders, who ran and sold Bethesda-based Iconics during the dot com boom era, wanted to “Give it another go and focus on quality.”
They filed their company papers the day before Sept. 11, 2001 at the Watergate Hotel, but despite those inauspicious beginnings, established a solid reputation in the Mid Atlantic region, Houston, and upper MidWest.
“The DC market has been good to be in for user experience,” says McDonald. “There are so many different kinds of organizations here. It’s the capital of non-profits, there’s the federal government, telecom startups, and different startups in Northern Virginia.”
That multi-faceted DC economy means that during the downturn, Navigation Arts business “Didn’t skip a beat, we had irons in the fire with so many different buyers, all focused on the user experience.”
Designed city portals
While the company doesn’t pretend to be a large government IT integrator, it does find projects where it can have a big impact, McDonald says. “We look for projects such in e-government, anything that is citizen-facing.”
It’s been working on a major project, not yet live, for the State Department consulates to streamline its processes to make finding information on Visas, passports and fraud much easier and faster, for instance.
It also redesigned the Charlotte Observer’s Charlotte.com site to make it more focused on social media, and a city portal site for Richmond, VA.
“Both have done well and we created each in two months from inception to launch,” McDonald says.
The Navigation Arts site follows the company’s own advice. It is user friendly and offers lots of short videos, including several by McDonald, on improving user experience and other topics.
Tags: Charlotte, Charlotte Observer, Charlotte.com, DC, Digital East, Houston, interview, Kelley McDonald, McLean, Navigation Arts, NC, Richmond, Tysons Corner, VA, web design, web user experience
Posted in Events, Government/Defense, IT, Internet/New Media, Potomac, Virginia, Washington, DC | 2 Comments »
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
 ARLINGTON, VA – Forty percent of consumers report they are likely to test drive an electric vehicle, according to a new study of online American adults from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).
The study, Electric Vehicles: The Future of Driving, suggests electric vehicles entice consumers with improved environmental quality and potential cost savings, but leave them with questions about battery life and convenience of battery charging.
Consumers are open to considering an electric vehicle in the future, with 42 percent reporting they are likely to follow news reports about electric vehicles. However, overall awareness of the various types of alternative vehicles remains low. While nearly one-third (32 percent) report they are familiar, or very familiar, with hybrid vehicles, only about one-quarter are familiar with electric-powered vehicles (25 percent).
For the first time, electric vehicles will be featured at the 2011 International CES, showcasing a full range of high- and low- speed vehicles, energy storage devices and charging equipment. This new CES TechZone will feature major automotive companies, including Audi, in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall.
Those consumers who are open to buying an electric vehicle cite the positive environmental impact and potential cost savings as primary reasons to do so. More than three-quarters of those surveyed (78 percent) said the vehicle’s ability to run without gasoline is the greatest advantage, followed by less pollution (67 percent), and the lack of need for oil changes and tune-ups (60 percent).
“For a new product category, interest in electric vehicles is strong and likely to grow as more vehicles enter the market and consumers become more aware of them,” said Chris Ely, CEA’s manager of industry analysis. “Manufacturers, dealers and other sellers will need to emphasize mileage and battery-related specifications when promoting and selling electric vehicles.”
Battery power among chief disadvantages seen
According to the study, consumers perceive several disadvantages about electric vehicles. Concerns about mileage potential before needing to recharge (50 percent) and battery life (34 percent) top the list. Cost of the vehicle, reliability and availability of charging stations are also key concerns many consumers have.
The study finds running out of battery power on the road (71 percent), lack of charging stations and/or not being able to recharge (66 percent) and limited mileage (59 percent) are the most common perceived disadvantages with electric vehicles.
Home charging stations may also impact purchase decisions. Half of consumers (51 percent) would be less likely to consider purchasing an electric vehicle if they would have to install special charging equipment for the batteries.
“Environmental benefits, coupled with potential cost savings in fuel and tune-ups, will lead to increased interest for electric vehicles and potential floor traffic at dealerships,” said Ely. “But concerns regarding battery life, charging stations and limited mileage may keep some consumers away until a comprehensive infrastructure is in place.”
Tags: CEA, electric vehicles, study
Posted in Energy, Potomac, Studies, surveys, reports, Virginia | No Comments »
Friday, August 20th, 2010
 ALEXANDRIA, VA – VSE Corporation (NASDAQ: VSEC) has acquired Akimeka, headquartered in Hawaii with offices in Virginia, Florida and Texas for approximately $33 million in cash, with the potential for additional payment of up to $11 million if certain financial targets are met during the next three years.
For the year ended December 31, 2009, Akimeka recorded revenues of approximately $38 million and pretax income of approximately $6.5 million.
Akimeka is a health services information technology consulting company serving the U.S. Government market. Most of Akimeka’s customers are in the Military Health System. Core expertise lies in E-health; Enterprise Architecture; Information Assurance/Business Continuity; Public Safety; Web Based Technologies and Systems Design and Integration.
Akimeka complements VSE’s most recent acquisition, G&B Solutions, an established information technology provider to many federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor, Social Security Administration and the Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation.
Maurice “Mo” Gauthier, CEO of VSE, said, “The acquisition of Akimeka is a strategic move to strengthen our IT offerings, particularly in the sector of health IT. G&B Solutions has health IT customers in the civilian agencies and now we add Akimeka, which has an excellent portfolio of Defense agency health IT customers.
Tags: Acquisitions, Akimeka, health services IT, Potomac, Virginia, VSE
Posted in Acquisitions, Government/Defense, IT, Potomac, Virginia, Washington, DC | No Comments »
Friday, August 20th, 2010
 MORRISVILLE, NC – Medical device company nContact has closed on a $4 million mixed securities offering, according to a regulatory filing. The company makes devices for the minimally invasive treatment of heart arrhythmias.
Investors include Harbert Management Corp., Birmingham, AL; Hippo Ventures; Finistere Ventures, San Diego; Village Ventures, Williamstown, MA; Tall Oaks Capital, Charlottesville, VA;’ Massey Burch Capital Corp., Nashville, TN; and Intersouth Partners, Durham, NC.
The company, founded in 2005, raised at least $24 million in three previous rounds.
On its web site, the company says, “We are currently enrolling patients in a series of clinical trials to evaluate the use of this system for the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF) in concomitant procedures as well as in convergent procedures, which combine the best techniques of Cardiovascular Surgeons and Electrophysiologists to potentially provide a truly minimally invasive treatment solution for all AF patients in a single procedure.”
The company disclosed the raise in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
To contact TechJournal South Editor & Writer Allan Maurer: Allan at TechJournalSouth dot com.
Tags: AL; Hippo Ventures; Finistere Ventures, Birmingham, Charlottesville, Durham, financing, Harbert Management Corp., MA; Tall Oaks Capital, Medical Device, Morrisville, Nashville, NC, nContact, San Diego; Village Ventures, TN; and Intersouth Partners, VA;' Massey Burch Capital Corp., Williamstown
Posted in Alabama, Carolinas, Healthcare, Medical Device, Money, North Carolina, Other SE, Potomac, Tennessee, Virginia | No Comments »
Friday, August 20th, 2010
 Christopher Mitchell By Chistopher Mitchell
Opelika, Alabama is the latest community in the Southeast to move toward a community owned broadband network.
Last week citizens approved a fiber-to-the-home network owned by the public power utility to expand telecom competition and invest in smart-grid services.
Though major telecom companies have long argued that broadband has plenty of competition, many communities beg to differ.
General dissatisfaction
This is not an uprising against a single cable or phone company, rather general dissatisfaction with de facto monopolist providers who focus first on shareholder returns rather than community needs.
Throughout the south, nearly every national cable co has had to deal with an upstart community that chose to own its information infrastructure: Comcast (Chattanooga, TN), Cox (Lafayette, LA), Time Warner (Wilson, NC), and Charter (Opelika, AL).
Fastest and least expensive broadband systems are municipal
The trend is fascinating: the single fastest citywide broadband tier available in the US comes from Chattanooga with 150Mbps.
Probably the most economical connection in the nation lies in Lafayette with 10Mbps for a mere $30/month (as with most community fiber networks, Lafayette and Chattanooga only offer symmetrical services – ensuring users can publish content as readily as downloading it).
Bristol, Virginia was first
In fact, the very first city-owned triple-play fiber-to-the-home network in the nation started in Bristol, Virginia, where it has brought hundreds of high paying jobs to people who sorely need them.
Opelika’s 62 percent yes vote was necessary because Alabama law requires a referendum before communities build a network offering cable services – laws pushed by deep-pocketed incumbent providers who understand that communities themselves are the most likely source of broadband competition.
Due to the massive upfront investment, long payback, and difficulty of competing with an entrenched incumbent, the private sector has little appetite for overbuilding.
Why communities build their own networks
Wireless may be competitive against DSL, but Wimax is no match for DOCSIS 3 cable networks, which are more reliable and offer higher capacity in general. Fiber-to-the-home offers much higher reliability, capacity, and headroom for upgrades but wireline companies with little competition see little pressure to upgrade.
This is why communities are building their own FTTH networks – they want to remain technologically competitive with the rest of the world (and superior to perhaps 95 percent of the US) but recognize they have to invest in this infrastructure themselves – just as many of them did when private companies saw little reason to offer electricity to everyone at reasonable rates.
Battle looms again in NC
In North Carolina, Time Warner Cable’s lobbyists have consistently fought to outlaw community networks (even in areas the private sector has no interest in serving).
The effort failed earlier this summer despite making greater inroads than previous attempts. They will undoubtedly be back in Raleigh to try again next session – lobbyists are a tiny expense compared to the cost of a truly competitive landscape for these companies.
Christopher Mitchell is the Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. He writes regularly about community networks on MuniNetworks.org and has published a comprehensive report about such networks: Breaking the Broadband Monopoly: How Communities are Building the Networks They Need .
TechJournal South has covered the efforts of states to regulate municipal broadband for some time. North Carolina has thus far turned back two efforts to put restrictions on the efforts of cities to create their own broadband networks, which one has done and several are planning. Both previous articles below contain links to numerous background pieces on the topic.
See: Six months to act
Municipal broadband battle rages on
Tags: AL, Bristol, Charter, Chattanooga, Comcast, Cox, LA, Lafayette, Municipal broadband, NC, Opelika, Time Warner, TN, VA, Wilson
Posted in Alabama, Carolinas, North Carolina, Other SE, Potomac, Telecommunications, Tennessee, Viewpoint, Virginia | No Comments »
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
 GOLETA, CA – SpectraFluidics, a company developing a platform for sensing air borne molecules at ultra low concentrations, has raised funding in an undisclosed amount from In-Q-Tel, the venture fund supporting missions of the US Intelligence community.
The technology behind Spectrafluidics’ system is a unique combination of free-surface microfluidics and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.
The high-throughput technology promises to improve screening productivity, and potentially enable 100 percent continuous trace vapor screening in critical applications which have typically relied upon slower sampling protocols and lab analysis instrumentation.
Initial target applications include in-line security screening for explosives, as well as food and agricultural produce where safety, quality and certification are increasingly important.”SpectraFluidics is developing a truly novel approach to real-time airborne chemical sensing, which could ultimately be configured as a hand-held instrument,” said Syd Ulvick, vice president, Physical and Biological Technologies practice at In-Q-Tel.
We’ll keep our eyes on the SEC filings and let you know if the amount of the investment turns up.
Tags: airborne molecule detection, financing, GA, Goleta, In-Q-Tel, Security, SpectraFluidics
Posted in Biotech, Georgia, Government/Defense, Hardware, Healthcare, Potomac, Security, Virginia | Comments Off
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
 Robert Marshall, CEO, WeatherBug By Allan Maurer
GERMANTOWN, MD – Weatherbug is one of the most successful sites on the web, in the top ten in the news and information category with 32 million unique monthly users. But while the web is not going away, it is going mobile, and Robert S. Marshall, founder and CEO of WeatherBug, says he agrees that “Mobile is the new standard.”
“Mobile has been a big focus for us for a long time,” Marshall says. “Weather information is the top content area used by consumers on mobile devices.”
Smartphones are driving a lot of the web going mobile sector, he notes. “Our usages statistics are significantly greater on smartphones,” he says. “They’re fast, offer a great user experience and people are becoming accustomed to them.”
Out in front on mobile
Marshall says the company is out in front on mobile already. Available on every smartphone platform, It has 12 million unique monthly users on mobile devices and is the 13th top mobile property.
“Our traffic of unique users has grown 185 percent year over year and the vast majority is coming from smartphone platforms. Android platforms have really accelerated and caught up to iPhones much faster than I thought they would, although we’ve had a success story with the iPhone as well.”
While some content is not particularly suited to a phone’s small screen, “Weather information certainly is,” he adds.
The proliferation of new hybrid devices such as the iPad and other tablet computers is another reason mobile is becoming a new standard way for people to access the web, he says.
Nothing more local than weather
The company, which makes its money via advertising, can offer something special to those using it to present marketing messages. “Weather is all geographically targeted,” Marshall says. “There is no better geographically located content than weather.” So WeatherBug can offer geographically precise targeting.
Founded in 1992, WeatherBug started in the education market by pioneering a program that included the installation of professional-grade automated weather stations at schools to help teachers apply real-world technology for math, science and geography curriculum. The schools were networked together to provide visibility into nationwide weather conditions and the WeatherBug Network began to form.
In 2000, WeatherBug launched the free desktop application, offering PC users live local current conditions and severe weather alerts right in their system tray. Within eight months of launch, 1.5 million users had downloaded the application, and since then WeatherBug has become one of the most popular desktop weather software ever with more than 78 million registered users.
We asked if WeatherBug has to maintain infrastructure to handle increased traffic during major storms and weather events. “It does have to handle those peaks,” Marshall says, but adds that the increase in traffic is not as big as one might think on a percentage basis.
“Even on normal days, people check the weather.”
Nevertheless, WeatherBug’s data centers handle humongous levels of traffic: 20,000 connections every second, 3 billion connections a day.
Advice: content still king
While Marshall admits that the company’s investors want to move toward an event that provides liquidity, “We’re growing, profitable and producing cash,” so the company is focused on delivering a great user experience whenever and wherever a consumer wants it, he says.
One of the things that separates WeatherBug from its competitors, Marshall points out, is its proprietary hyper local weather reporting system.
We asked Marshall what advice he would give to an entrepreneur starting out in the digital realm today. “At the end of the day, content is is king,” he says. “You have to find content large numbers of people want ot consume and then design and develop delivery platforms to give superior user experience fast and when they want it.
“Do that effectively, grow your user base, and you when you achieve the proper level of scale, you monetize and create a business.”
Marshall is one of more than 50 digital industry luminaries, entrepreneurs, executives, and venture capitalists participating in the first Digital East event at Tysons Corner, VA, Oct. 18.
Tags: Digital East, mobile, Robert Marshall, WeatherBug
Posted in Events, Internet/New Media, Potomac, Virginia | Comments Off
Monday, August 16th, 2010
DULLES, VA - Telestream has agreed to acquire Dulles-based Grab Networks’ Anystream division. Financial details were not disclosed.
The combination will further extend Telestream’s position in the software video transcoding market.
Founded ten years ago, Anystream pioneered a solution for media companies looking to produce and transcode video to publish on the web with the introduction of their Agility products.
The company grew to become a leading provider of automated multi-platform media publishing solutions, and its solutions are used by over 600 of the leading media companies in 38 countries around the world.
FLIR Systems acquiring ICx Technologies
ARLINGTON, VA – ICx Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq GM:ICXT), a developer of advanced sensor technologies for homeland security, force protection and commercial applications, has entered into a definitive merger agreement with FLIR Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:FLIR).
According to the agreement, ICx would be acquired through a cash tender offer, followed by a merger with a subsidiary of FLIR, for a price of $7.55 per share in cash.
FLIR focuses on design, manufacturing, and marketing of thermal imaging and stabilized camera systems for a wide variety of thermography and imaging applications.
Tags: acquistions, Anystream, Arlington, Dulles, ICx Technologies, Virginia
Posted in Acquisitions, IT, Internet/New Media, Potomac, Virginia | Comments Off
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