Technology Times: January 2010

Who was seen celebrating and connecting at the Enterprise Awards? Click here to browse the photo gallery.

Message from the CEO

All who moved forward
were winners in 2009

A New Year and a new decade have begun with tantalizing signs that an economic recovery is taking hold in our region (see DoubleStar survey results). Here’s hoping it’s a rising tide that will lift all of our member companies.

The 18 months of economic ebb we have all endured tested our entrepreneurial ingenuity and fortitude to a degree not seen in most of our lifetimes. Many companies had to get lighter to stay afloat, and that meant painful cutbacks and job losses.

Seeing what we’ve seen, I think you’ll agree with me that every company and leader who was able to keep moving forward despite the undertow of recession was a winner in 2009.
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Member Survey

What will you DO MORE OF to gain new business in 2010?(opinion)

News and Features

CEOs Mark Weinstein of BioClinica and Paul Touhey of Fujirebio Diagnostics each won a Company of the Year award.

Enterprise Award winners exemplify region’s best companies and CEOs
Slideshow of gala photos
attests to a memorable night of celebrating and connecting

The latest edition of the Eastern Technology Council Enterprise Awards was a festive testament to the strength of the region’s business community in a historically challenging year.

Though a sudden cold snap threatened to keep the revelers away, droves of technology and life sciences movers and shakers filled the elegant ballrooms of the Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue on December 3.
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The business case for social media, part 1:
How companies use LinkedIn and Facebook
Why people in marketing,
sales and recruiting roles
are befriending the top
social networking sites

Skip Shuda decided to conduct an informal survey. On three social media sites — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn — he posed a question: What is your topmost reason for using social media? The list of possibilities included searching, recruiting, selling and building credentials.

The goal was to see why users favored certain sites. LinkedIn respondents, for instance, cited networking and job leads, while Facebookers sought to deepen family, friend and business relationships. “They each have a unique imprint,” said Shuda, CEO of Team and a Dream, a Wayne firm whose specialties include social media, Internet marketing and marketing strategies.
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DoubleStar’s regional Hiring Trends Survey offers hope for job market recovery in 2010

After months of job losses and employment market stagnation, there is finally some reason for optimism in the data contained in DoubleStar's Mid-Atlantic Hiring Trends Survey.

First, headcount reductions at area employers continued to slow in Q4 2009. Headcount reductions, reported at 37% of companies in Q2, were reported at only 16% in Q3. The DoubleStar survey results, published Nov. 5, presaged the November national unemployment report that showed only 11,000 job losses for the month as compared with 130,000 in October.
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Salaries up 2.4% in 2009 for
Mid-Atlantic technology SMBs
Greater increase predicted for 2010,
but overall numbers at 10-year lows

In 2009, salaries went up 2.4%, but the increase is significantly less than the 4.2% seen in 2008, according to the KnowledgeBank 2009-2010 Total Compensation Survey of Mid-Atlantic Technology Companies.

For 2010, survey participants are projecting an average salary increase of 3.2%. Even with that .8% increase over 2009 levels, salary adjustments remain at historic lows for the past decade.
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William Bumbernick

Secrets of Success
William Bumbernick, CEO, Alteva

William R. Bumbernick is Chief Executive Officer of Alteva, a VoIP business phone service provider that delivers IP telephony across the United States and on four continents. Bumbernick has more than 10 years of senior management and entrepreneurial experience in telecom, IT and managed services, having served in executive positions within the technology and telecommunications sectors since 1994.

Since 2003, Bumbernick has been focused on emerging VoIP technologies and the establishment and growth of Alteva. He has been recognized by Smart Business Magazine as their VoIP expert and he serves on the Board of Directors of BCG and BCG Securities.
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Departments

Guest Column

Ben Franklin Technology Partners
salutes 2009 Enterprise Award winners

History and experience show that talented entrepreneurs can drive economic growth during downturns. That is why all of us at Ben Franklin extend our sincere congratulations to the award winners and finalists of the 2009 Enterprise Awards.

It is always inspiring to be in the presence of companies who are forging ahead with new products and business models. Ben Franklin is proud to be an annual sponsor of the Enterprise Awards, and we are even more proud of all our client and alumni award finalists: BioNanomatrix, Cogniscape, CoreDial, Core Solutions, Innova Materials, Jane Hollingsworth from Nupathe, Matt Reichert from Health Market Science, MBF Therapeutics, Real-Time Tomography, Topaz Pharmaceuticals and Y-Carbon.
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Medical Devices

Innovation under siege as Congress
aims to tax medical devices

It was only a few months ago when the U.S. device industry's primary concerns with healthcare reform was reserved to a few critical areas of competing legislative proposals. Issues ranging from transparency of industry payments to healthcare providers, comparative effectiveness research and payment reform were thought to be the proposals most likely to affect the device industry over the next decade. However, in September 2009, the industry was thrown a curve ball when a healthcare reform proposal generated by the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance included a $40 billion “fee” on the industry.
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Business Technology

Elegant compliance in a world
of regulation – at a glance

Compliance, regardless of industry, involves an orchestrated effort between corporate and IT management to implement systems that are capable of providing information access, timeliness and accuracy. Organizations, faced with an increasingly complex regulatory landscape, need to focus their energies on running their businesses, not cobbling together a multi-vendor IT solution to meet their compliance and reporting requirements.

The key is working with solutions providers who understand the subtleties and uniqueness of their environments, those who can bring to bear the services, infrastructure and application expertise to enable organizations to collect, organize and distribute data from all parts of the organization to achieve real-time business objectives.
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CIO Institute

Tasty Baking hosted Council's CIO Institute

Tasty Baking Company’s Brendan O'Malley and Christian Garofalo check out the servers at the company’s new corporate headquarters at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia. O’Malley hosted an Eastern Technology Council CIO Institute Show and Tell Event for CIO Institute members and invited guests in November. The event included breakfast, networking, a tour of the building and a Q and A session.

Members

Member Profiles

AcceleDev Chemical LLC
Wayne, N.J.

AcceleDev is expert in the areas of chemistry design, development and scale-up; and production of complex pharmaceutical intermediates and active ingredients. AcceleDev performs both FTE work and price per molecule or per kilo, from lab to commercial scale.
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Allied Pixel
Media, Pa.

Allied Pixel is an integrated media production company. It connects the dots between HD video production, Web development and interactive multimedia production. Allied Pixel brings creativity and technical proficiency to every project, including websites, interactive applications, Blu-ray videos, HD webcasting and mobile applications.
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Shunra
Philadelphia

Shunra provides visibility into how a critical application will perform. For instance, if a financial trade must be completed on NASDAQ the response time of the application used by the trader is of paramount importance. Shunra has predictive intelligence that enables an IT Professional to know if the Trader will encounter a delay so that they can take action to resolve the issue before the end user is impacted. In an environment where a millisecond of delay can cost millions Shunra is essential.
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Member Reports

Member Reports are grouped alphabetically by company name. Please click on the group heading to view reports from the companies listed in that group.

Member Reports A-C

20nine Design Studios
Allied Pixel
Alteva
Ben Franklin
Technology Partners

Beyond.com, Inc.
Bioconnect Systems, Inc.
BizTech
Compuware Corporation

Member Reports D-I

Data Systems Analysts, Inc.
Deacom, Inc.
Edison Venture Fund
Eurand Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Fastech Integrated
Solutions, LLC

Gwynedd-Mercy College
Healthy Humans
Hollister Creative
iPipeline

Member Reports J-Z

Microsoft Corporation
MISI Company
Neuronetics
Nimlok Philadelphia

SaberSource
Shunra Software
SunGard Higher Education
University City Science Center

Technology Times is published six times a year as a service to members of the Eastern Technology Council, as well as those who actively participate in the business, life sciences and technology communities in the Delaware Valley.

Publisher: Dianne Strunk, CEO, Eastern Technology Council

Hollister Creative, Wynnewood, Pa., provides creative services as follows:

Editor: Kim Landry
Managing Editor: Martha Michaela Hutchman Brown
Contributing Editors: Pamela George
Art Director: Georgette Klotz

This publication is distributed with the understanding that neither the publisher nor any other party is rendering expert advice. If expert assistance is required, seek the advice of a competent professional. ©2010 Eastern Technology Council, 527 Plymouth Road, Suite 419, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462; 610-975-9430.