information technology : Innovation + Job News

There's no doubt today's economy is challenging, and there's no guarantee that a plum job (or any job for that matter) will be awaiting college grads.

A trio of University of Dayton students knows just how hard it can be to find a great job opportunity. So they've launched a new company, Brain Rack, that matches creative students with companies through the emerging crowd sourcing problem solving model.

Two UD grads and a one senior launched BrainRack this spring. Here's how it works: A company or organization poses a challenge, basically a question seeking an innovative answer, to college students. Students submit answers to the question for company review. The company awards a cash prize to the best, and then has the opportunity to interview these students for a job. The challenges also are open to recent college grads.

"It's a way to link interesting companies with creative students," said Brain Rack co-founder Senay Semere. "What we are doing is giving a voice to students who may not be able to be heard by companies. This is also a great way for companies to market themselves and get prospective employees at an early age."

This year BrainRack won second place in the University of Dayton's Business Plan Competition and $10,000. It also took second place honors in the Midwest pool at the winner-takes all Harvard Business School Alumni New Venture Competition.

BrainRack also has a big social media component. Students can easily share the sites, and challenges by Facebook and Twitter. BrainRack is advertising on Facebook and spreading the word about the site via several social media sites.

"In addition to that we are working on a grass roots campaign with student reps on 18 campuses (across the U.S. and Europe) who are physically promoting us," said Matthew Veryser, who directors BrainRack's social media campaigns.

Sources: Senay Semere and Matthew Veryser, BrainRack
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

While ChumpDump itself may never make its creators rich, the user information it is now pouring into a central data base just might pay off.

The concept for the Twitter-related game germinated during Startup Weekend Columbus 2010, an April event that brought the entrepreneurial-minded together for three days of brainstorming and fleshing out of new ideas for startups, says Dan Rockwell, co-founder of ChumpDump and CEO of Columbus-based Big Kitty Labs.

"I wasn't interested in jumping on another team," Rockwell says of that weekend. But a light bulb went off while chatting with colleagues about a company Twitter managed to shut down for enabling bulk, automatic "unfollows" of Twitter friends.

"We were laughing about that, and we thought we can make something faster and easier than that, and we'll do it nice and novel and wrap it in a game. We'll call it ChumpDump."

ChumpDump debuted for iPhone and Google Android earlier this month. Within two weeks, 500 people were playing. Each day, ChumpDump picks a name randomly from your friends list and scours through a month of tweets. It tells you how many times your friend sent you a direct message, how many times he or she retweeted your tweets, number of replies to your messages and other factors that enable you to answer this question: "Save or dump?"

Three points for saving -- and three points for dumping. More importantly, Rockwell says, players must give a reason why they are saving or dumping a friend.

The free game is unlikely to create much revenue, says Rockwell, but that's OK. The project helped its creators gain new capabilities in game mechanics, leader board design, in-game ads, Android development and in-game purchasing. And, as ChumpDumpers grow in number, the rich information concerning why people choose to save or dump could become a data mine worth its weight in iPhones.

Source: Dan Rockwell, ChumpDump
Writer: Gene Monteith

What began as an Internet service provider in 2001 has blossomed into one of the fastest growing tech companies in the country.

CentraComm, based in Findlay, is an IT security and service provider with clients throughout the U.S. Despite a tough economy, CentraComm has managed to land on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies three years running; it's been on the CRN list of fastest growing technology companies four years in a row.

CEO Daniel Bemis attributes that success to smart employees with a passion for customer service -- and to staying focused.

"We know what we do very well and we try to stay focused on that," Bemis says. "We don't try to be all things to all people. Another key is that we're very customer-focused. It can be a clich�, but in several cases we're literally a four-digit extension on a company's phone."

Bemis, a Monroeville native, returned to Ohio last year when he took the helm of CentraComm after serving stints at Vonage, Adelphia and CRN. At Vonage, Bemis oversaw all customer operations and inside sales as the company became the fastest growing startup in the country.

While he says the company won't add significantly this year to its 25-employee headcount, a few jobs likely will be added. At the same time, the company is taking advantage of the Ohio Third Frontier Internship Program, which helps pay the freight for students participating in the program.

"We see that as a great way to attract young talent in school and get them on-boarded at a cost that you can sustain," he says. "The other thing we believe is that as the Third Frontier helps fund existing manufacturers moving to more high tech manufacturing, that will create opportunity for us because we support those kinds of companies."

Source: Daniel Bemis, CentraComm
Writer: Gene Monteith

Every culture starts with a story about its creation. The story of Hyland Software's culture started in 1991 with a determined, young Packy Hyland Jr. who refused to fail.

Hyland visited a bank in Wisconsin in 1991 to learn about what kind of records-management technology the bank was looking for. The bank's president asked his opinion of a competitor's product.

"I could write it better and cheaper," Hyland told the president while the competitor looked on. The president (not knowing that Hyland had never written a line of computer code) gave Packy two weeks to come up with what he promised � a better and cheaper solution.
Hyland deilvered.

Today, Cleveland-based Hyland Software enables a broad spectrum of organizations to become operationally more efficient and effective, using OnBase, the company's award-winning enterprise content management. Customers include the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve University, Antares Management Solutions (subsidiary of Medical Mutual of Ohio) and the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Revenues keep growing, and Westlake-based company recently received a NorTech business expansion award.

Hyland has since retired. His younger brothers, A.J. Hyland (who is now the CEO) and Chris Hyland (now the CFO) have taken over the company's operations.

In Oct. 2009, Hyland Software moved into a new $5 million, 28,000-sqare-foot facility across the street from the company's headquarters. The company also has offices in Lincoln, Neb.; Irvine, Calif.; S�o Paulo; London; and Tokyo.

The company employs almost 1,000 around the world � 750 of them are in Northeast Ohio, says company spokeswoman Kaitlin Maurer. She adds that with the company's (the Hyland family's) roots, there are no plans to move.

"It makes sense for us to stay in Northeast Ohio," she says. "That's something that's important to the founders of the company."

Source: Kaitlin Maurer, Hyland Software
Writer: Colin McEwen

iSqFt has merged information technology with traditional bidding and construction planning methods to realize a 30 percent increase in revenue and a 230 percent jump in employment over the last two years.

Founded in 1993, the Blue Ash-based firm began as a client-based software firm, says Dave Conway, president and CEO. That started to change when the company became serious about leveraging the Internet.

The result was Internet Plan Room and Private Construction Offices.

"The Internet Plan room is a service for subcontractors to gain access to bidding projects," Conway says. "They get a list of the projects in their market area and are able to view those projects on blueprints, view the specifications, search queries and they can find the kind of projects they would like to bid on. We connect subcontractors to the general contractors who are actually bidding the job. And then the general contractors will use an online tool (Private Construction Office) to manage the bidding process so they can manage their documents, manage their data base of subcontractors as well as all the communications that occur during the bidding phase."

The technology improves business processes, which reduces costs and increases efficiencies and effectiveness, he says.

Not only has iSqFt been recognized as one of Ohio's fastest-growing companies, but as one of the best places to work. Along the way, employment has increased from 150 to 350 in the last two years.

The company has received both Ohio Third Frontier money -- $2 million in 2006 and another $1 million earlier this year to further develop its platform -- and venture capital from Ohio Capital Fund participants like River Cities Capital Fund, Chysalis Ventures, Tri-State Growth Capital Fund and Reservoir Venture Partners.

Source: Dave Conway, iSqFt
Writer: Gene Monteith

Today's insurers are sticklers for making sure medical providers don't prescribe costly medications or treatments that could be substituted by generics or lower cost alternatives.

The result is "prior authorization," a set of rules and procedures that can make for a complicated and paper-intensive process for doctors, pharmacists and other professionals who must deal with a large number of insurers and a large number of forms.

CoverMyMeds has set its sites on eliminating hard-copy paperwork related to prior authorization of pharmaceuticals. The year-old company, based in Twinsburg with operations in Columbus, rolled out its solution last April. Sam Rajan, one of the company's founders, says since then thousands of clients all over the country have embraced the new online procedure that reduces time on task by as much as 75 percent.

Until now, prior authorization has been "a very manual paper process," Rajan says. "Any time there's paper involved, the work flow is disrupted and work stops. There are a couple of studies out there that show patients -- a good number of them -- can go without therapy if these prior authorizations aren't completed. That's primarily due to the provider not knowing where to go to look for the proper forms, the rules and how to get the ball rolling."

CoverMyMeds allows a provider to go online, find the right form, share it with another healthcare professional, fill it out and e-fax it to the insurer -- all in under five minutes, compared the traditional 15 to 25 minutes.

The firm has caught the attention of JumpStart, which recently invested $250,000 in the company. The funds will be used for additional technology infrastructure and personnel as the company further develops its capabilities, Rajan says.

CoverMyMeds has 11 employees and expects near-term growth to push that number up by about 50 percent.

Source: Sam Rajan, CoverMyMeds
Writer: Gene Monteith

"The traditional means of testing water for pollutants is to go out in boat, scoop up a few samples, and send them off to the lab for evaluation," explains Milt Baker, president of Blue Water Satellite.

The problem with that method, he says, is that a handful of random samples is a poor representation of the body of water at large. And then there is the expense of sending live people out to perform the work.

Blue Water has a better (and far cheaper) way.

Using patented image-processing software developed by the company's chief technology officer, Blue Water can determine the location and concentration of pollutants in lakes, rivers and streams without ever getting wet. Starting with high-resolution satellite imagery, the proprietary technology translates various light intensity patterns into components such as cyanobacteria, phosphorus, and chlorophyll a.

Whereas a typical water test consists of a handful of grab samples for an entire body of water, Blue Water is able to provide the equivalent of five samples for every acre. In the case of a 1,000-acre lake, that's the difference between six to 10 samples versus 5,000 � at roughly the same price.

Blue Water's customers range from federal, state and local governments to large environmental engineering firms tasked with remediating large environmental problems. The technology makes it easy to perform work for clients scattered across the globe.

Founded in 2008 in Bowling Green, the company currently employs 20 people. Baker envisions a high-growth curve that will increase sales from $1 million next year to $30 million in five short years.

Source: Milt Baker, Blue Water Satellite
Writer: Douglas Trattner

When up and running, the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Center will represent a first-of-its-kind effort to make Ohio a leader in creating clean energy jobs.

A groundbreaking is planned for October for the new 20,000-square-foot Center in Lima. The center, a non-profit incubator, will initially house a flexible fabrication and robotic assembly demonstration project. It will focus on several technology clusters including design and development, sustainable energy, advanced materials, agile tooling, additive manufacturing technologies, simulation software and others.

The center is designed to create new, high tech manufacturing jobs in Ohio. The state has a history of manufacturing and innovation, but has lost some manufacturing jobs like much of the Midwest as global economic conditions have shifted. State economic development leaders and government officials in Lima see the center as way to recapture the state's manufacturing tradition by creating new manufacturing solutions and processes.

The center is backed by state and federal dollars, including $1 million the federal government awarded the project in 2009.
 
It's just been awarded a $457,375 state Roadwork Development Grant, and the center has applied for a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration.

A site for the center was chosen and secured within Lima's Ohio Job Ready Site program site located on South Main Street, says Judith Cowan, the center's president. 

Sources: Ohio Department of Development and Judith Cowan, president Ohio Advanced Energy Manufacturing Center
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

Communication errors have long been a problem in the healthcare industry, contributing to an unacceptable number of unfavorable patient outcomes. Now, a five-year-old Ohio company is stepping up with a range of critical test result management products to ensure patients get timely care while offering healthcare professionals an affordable way to close the communication loop.

RADAR Medical Systems is ramping up commercialization of a series of products that offer interactive communication to doctors everywhere, from high-end integrated systems for hospitals to a monthly subscription service tailored for single-practice doctor's offices.

"There have been companies doing this in the field of radiology for a few years. What we've done is taken that concept and expanded it dramatically," says RADAR CEO Jack Cornell.

Through three levels of its primary service, RADAR offers doctor-to-doctor instant messaging, an alert system that requires acknowledgment of important information and automatic logging of patient information for risk management. Another product does many of the same things for much less cost through a RADAR-housed monthly subscription service.

Most importantly, all of RADAR's systems seamlessly work with computer systems hospitals already have in place, meaning healthcare facilities can earn Joint Commission accreditation with very low up-front costs.

The end result is better care for patients, says Cornell.

RADAR, now based in Chagrin Falls, graduated from the Regional Growth Partnership in April, using a $50,000 grant from the organization to put the final touches on its software, test it within a wide range of computer systems and start marketing in earnest. In March, RADAR also got a $400,000 vote of confidence from Rocket Ventures.

With four full-time employees currently, the company is poised to jobs in the near future, Cornell says.

Source: Jack Cornell, RADAR Medical Systems
Writer: Dave Malaska

With the launch of their new 2.6 Version Remote Backup Appliance, 3X Systems of Columbus is optimistic that the future holds strong growth as their market share increases both in the U.S. and overseas.

3X was founded in 2006 by Alan Arman with the help of a $500,000 grant from TechColumbus. Today, the company has hundreds of clients in countries around the world and saw growth of 74 percent in 2009, says Arman.

Arman's mission when he founded the company was to create data back up that was affordable and reliable. Customers include medical practices, law firms, non-profit groups and small to medium size manufacturing companies, he says. They appreciate one of the key features of the storage back up - which is that they control where the data is stored.

"We allow customers to control where the data back up goes," he says. "They have access to the data. No one else can access it."

Arman says clients choose where the data storage appliance is located, something that is not normally a choice when hiring a data back up service.

As sales continue to increase in the next 12 to 24 months, Arman says he plans to hire up to three new professionals in sales, marketing and software development to add to the 10 employees he now has. He says he expects sales to double this year.

Source: Alan Arman, 3X Systems
Writer: Val Prevish

Mason IT consulting firm Afidence's expertise in saving companies money through increased efficiency has helped this young company grow in just a few short months.

Afidence President Bryan Hogan started the company as a spinoff from Ray & Barney Group, an IT recruiting and consulting company based in Columbus. Hogan co-owned the Columbus company and bought out the consulting portion, opening an office in the Cincinnati area where he lives.

Afidence advises clients on how to best use IT to improve efficiency and the bottom line. The company works with a variety of large and small companies but has a large number of clients in the higher education and health care sectors.

Afidence doesn't promote or sell hardware or software, but its employees have expertise in more than a dozen programs including Microsoft Exchange, Cisco, Blackberry, Citrix, K2 automation, WMware virtualization and Windows 7.

Afidence's key focus areas include backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity, IT planning, strategy, and business goals alignment, business process automation and workflow, document, data, and content management, workforce planning and project management among others.

Hogan brought several employees from his former company, starting out with 15 when Afidence opened its doors in January 2010. The company has since hired three employees and could hire up to four more by year's end, he said.

Source: Bryan Hogan, Afidence
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

Dan Meyer, President and CEO of Comet Solutions, credits incentives from the state of Ohio among reasons the New Mexico-founded company opened its executive offices to Cincinnati, growing in the process.

Comet Solutions uses virtual modeling to test a variety of products for functionality and durability prior to manufacturing. Incorporated in 2001, the company moved its headquarters to Cincinnati suburb Blue Ash after in 2008 after being awarded $1.4 million in incentives from the Innovation Ohio Loan Fund. The company also received Ohio Job Creation Tax Credits valued at more than $400,000.

"We were attracted to the type of incentives Ohio had that would help companies like ours grow," Meyer said. "It really was life saving. The Innovation Ohio Loan Fund allowed us to continue to invest in our product software development and to advance our product."

Comet Solutions' six-person executive team is in Ohio, including the heads of corporate development and customer support. Excluding Meyer, who worked remotely in Ohio for the company prior to receiving incentives, all the executive team members have been hired within the last year or so, and were hired from the Ohio area.

Though the company's original software developers remain in New Mexico, the future of the company's growth is in Ohio. Comet Solution plans on hiring customer support employees and engineers who will work out of the Blue Ash office within the next year, Meyer said.

Comet Solutions works with advanced manufacturing companies with a special emphasis on the aerospace and defense sectors. Though the company's client base is global is scope, Ohio's cluster of advanced manufacturing and aerospace industries made the state an attractive place to relocate, Meyer said.

"There is a lot of talent here and people who know this industry well," he said. "And many of our clients are in the Midwest, just a few hours' drive from Ohio."

Source: Dan Meyer, Comet Solutions
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

Columbus-based DoMedia was founded in 2007 to help bring some order to the "out-of-home" media marketplace. Since then, it's tripled its employee base and is ready to ride the booming digital media wave.

Out-of-home advertising is anything out of the home on which you can place a branded message, explains DoMedia CEO Andy Mansinne. Bus huts, aerial banners, pizza boxes -- just about anything can be used as an advertising medium.

However, "it's very fragmented and very opaque and there aren't very many ways to get your arms around what's out there, measure its efficacy and then systematically and efficiently secure and purchase those media assets," Mansinne says.

DoMedia provides an online marketplace for finding, planning, buying and selling alternative, traditional and digital out-of-home media. Media providers (like billboard companies) use DoMedia to create detailed online profiles, while advertisers and agencies can use DoMedia's database to plan and build their out-of-home campaigns.

While traditional out-of-home is alive and well, "digital out of home has come screaming to the forefront in the last year," Mansinne says. Think of those big screens you might view while waiting in line at the movies -- "anything that can be delivered from an extended video format or even like Captivate, which is static art in elevators."

Mansinne says 400 agencies are now registered DoMedia users as well as 1,200 media sellers worldwide. The company has benefitted from funding led by Columbus-based NCT Ventures as well as support from the Ohio Third Frontier's Innovation Ohio Loan Fund -- DoMedia received more than $1 million from the fund for 2010, Mansinne says.

DoMedia has 10 employees today compared to three two years ago, and expects continued growth behind new services and the rise of digital out-of-home media.

Source: Andy Mansinne, DoMedia
Writer: Gene Monteith

Advertising has always been a tricky business. With the dawn of advertising on the internet, that tricky situation became an impossibly intricate one: a dizzying array of mouse clicks, website "hits" and page referrals.

While companies jockeyed to accurately measure the success of internet advertising, Columbus-based ClearSaleing Inc. has become a leader in ensuring its clients are getting the most bang for their online advertising buck.

ClearSaleing, founded in 2006 with help from the Ohio TechAngel Fund and TechColumbus, partners talent pooled from Google, electronic commerce leader ECNext, eBusiness Solutions and top online marketers. The company has gone on to develop software that accurately attributes profit and return on investment across the varied online marketing touch-points that eventually lead to more business for its clients.

"We're fully focused on advertising analytics, which is tracking every form of traffic brought to a website," says Adam S. Goldberg, one of the company's founders and its chief innovation officer.

Goldberg, who jumped to ClearSaleing after helping start Google's first inside sales team, says it's not enough to track just the end result of website visits, which is what most tracking systems do now. Instead, ClearSaleing focuses on every step along the way.

"Now, when a marketer look at their online ad investments, they have a better idea of which ones are profitable, and how profitable they are. Those that aren't, they can fix or put their money elsewhere."

Recently named TechColumbus' Product of the Year and a product marketers "Can't Live Without" at the Search Engine Watch Awards, ClearSaleing has nearly 100 clients that include names like Goodyear and Stanley Steemer. The company's also growing fast, with 40 employees -- a number Goldberg says could be increasing soon.

Source: Adam S. Goldberg, ClearSaleing
Writer: Dave Malaska

Getting noticed by a Hollywood producer is tough -- especially if you live in Ohio.

GotCast answered the problem with an interactive website designed to make it easier for aspiring actors, models and others across the country to connect with producers on the coasts.

Founded in Columbus in 2007, "there was a serious problem with casting directors and producers in Hollywood connecting with your average entertainment person across the country," says Justin Moodley, director of operations.

A shift from scripted television programming to reality shows and those looking for "normal people off the street" strengthened the need for links between aspiring talent and production teams looking for fresh faces.

GotCast today boasts more than 250,000 members and has tracked more than 5,000 castings, Moodley says -- including a member chosen for next season's "Project Runway."

Most features of the site are free, though members can join at a "pro" level for $19 a month, Moodley says. GotCast's revenues come largely from sponsors and website management for entertainment partners (see http://stortellers.vh1.com)

While answering a listing on the site is easy, getting noticed takes thought," Moodley says.

"The profile's really the most important thing," he says. "You have to think about it the same way you would on Monster.com."

GotCast also includes "open" online castings, in which contestants ask others to vote for them, but Moodley says the vast majority of members get hired through manual submissions.

While GotCast management moved to Los Angeles two and a half years ago, half of GotCast's eight employees remain in central Ohio, with plans to add additional support personnel.

Source: Justin Moodley, GotCast
Writer: Gene Monteith