By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
March 21, 2011 (March 22 on OBJ.ca)

Click here to view this article on OBJ.ca.

Fate of my1voice technology uncertain; MyFax and Campaigner to continue

More than 100 staff have been let go from Internet fax and communications services provider Protus’s local office since the Ottawa company announced its $213-million acquisition by Hollywood rival j2 Global Communications three months ago, a company official confirmed.

Steve Adams, Protus’s vice-president and general manager, said about 130 or 140 people are currently employed in the Ottawa operations. That’s down significantly from the 300-employee figure recorded in Protus’s latest Ottawa Technology magazine listing.

“When the initial announcement was made, there were layoffs, but that’s behind us now,” said Mr. Adams. “It’s a stable environment here and we’re hiring now; we have open positions in (customer) support and technical areas.”

The news adds detail to Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
March 21, 2011

Click here to view this article on OBJ.ca.

Steve West.
Photo courtesy of Nordion Inc.

Diversification will be the name of the game for Nordion Inc. in the coming years, both the company and its observers say, with the health sciences firm’s first-quarter earnings exhibiting the delicate balance between its emerging opportunities and lingering concerns about how it will stabilize its main isotope processing business.

Nordion’s stock climbed to $11.99 on the Toronto Stock Exchange before the release of its first-quarter financials earlier this month, which showed the company had an income from continuing operations of US$23.43 million, or 35 cents per share, and revenues of $69.98 million. That’s compared with a loss from continuing operations of $43.32 million, or 36 cents per share, a year earlier, on revenues of $45.47 million.

But since then, the stock has come back down to earth, as the strong earnings and 27-per-cent reduction in selling, general and administrative costs, to $16.15 million, were tempered by the fact that revenues missed analyst expectations of $76 million.

Still, Nordion CEO Steve West is upbeat on the potential of the company’s options, including the TheraSphere targeted liver cancer therapy, which contributed to a 20.8-per-cent increase in revenues for the targeted therapies division, to $17.82 million.

“It’s clear that as we talk about Nordion … there’s a significantly emerging level of interest in TheraSphere,” he said, adding that the product is now the third-largest in its portfolio in terms of revenues. “It’s been lost a bit in the shuffle in previous years, but it’s definitely a component of our core strategy.”

The product is already being reimbursed by public health-care systems and U.S. HMOs, or health maintenance organizations. And now that it’s received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for new TheraSphere trials Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
March 21, 2011

Click here to view this article on OBJ.ca.

Local entrepreneurs to use proceeds to cook up two new products

Sliced Bread CEO and ‘dough practitioner’
Chris Saracino.
Photo by MIV FOURNIER.

When Chris Saracino and his partner Steve Palmer put the finishing touches on their Hello Referrals web-based software, the full expectation was they would just let it “linger on the web” and grow on its own, with the two entrepreneurs perhaps putting a little bit more work into explaining the application’s benefits to target users.

So when they got the call from Madison, Wis.-based Refertrac with a five-figure offer to buy their flagship product, it was rather a pleasant surprise. Refertrac had a competing tool, geared specifically towards the financial industry, but the U.S. firm saw an opportunity with Hello Referrals.

Within 48 hours, Mr. Saracino said, a deal had been set up, leaving the two Ottawa entrepreneurs and their company, Sliced Bread Inc., with cash to fund two other apps on which they were already working.

“We were always under the impression it was something that would take a bit of ramp-up and anticipated having a bit of adoption time,” said Mr. Saracino, who describes Hello Referrals as a tool for groups such as chambers of commerce or trade associations to exchange and follow up on referrals for business leads.

He said he and Mr. Palmer, as members themselves of various networking groups and chambers of commerce, found group members were often using hard-to-track methods such as exchanging slips of paper, casual phone calls or random e-mails whenever a connection recommended a business opportunity.

“What we were hearing was that beyond the initial attempt or even second attempt at contact, most leads were falling off the map, since they were somewhat outside regular attempts at getting business,” Mr. Saracino explained. “We thought this was a little backwards since referrals are precious opportunities that come with somebody’s endorsement.”

As such, the pair – who have Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
March 7, 2011 (March 10 on OBJ.ca)

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Observers say combination will likely mean status quo or benefit for Ottawa companies

The proposed $7-billion merger between the Toronto Stock Exchange’s parent company and the London Stock Exchange may be causing some consternation in political circles, but in the Ottawa community, it seems it’s business as usual.

“At this point of time (the details are) not material enough; those companies that are planning to go to (the TSX) will go ahead anyway,” said Brent Timmons, a lawyer with BrazeauSeller LLP.

For a company looking to go public, the U.K. exchange currently entails “more hoops, hurdles and costs” than the Toronto board, said Mr. Timmons, which would be a definite downside of a marriage between the LSE and TSX parent the TMX Group, if it leads to the shifting of regulatory operations to London.

However, he notes that’s unlikely, especially considering Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
March 7, 2011 (March 9 on OBJ.ca)

Click here to view this article on OBJ.ca.

Kirk Mandy.
Ottawa Business Journal file photo.

Between leading a company through the aftermath of the high-tech meltdown, a heated proxy battle and a global recession, Kirk Mandy has had quite the busy six years since coming out of retirement to take the helm at Zarlink Semiconductor … again.

Mr. Mandy announced recently that he would be succeeded by Gary Tanner in May of this year, closing the chapter on a half-decade rebuilding process and a 27-year career overall at the chipmaker.

Since 2005, when Mr. Mandy took over following the departure of Patrick Brockett after a three-year stint marked by poor financial results, the company has made strides in shoring up its balance sheet in the face of “significant challenges and opportunities,” in the words of Zarlink chair Adam Chowaniec.

“We’re in a position now where we’ve made substantial investments in new product platforms, the company has cash, and frankly, the company is doing quite well,” Mr. Mandy earlier told OBJ.

Zarlink has indeed managed to weather several storms, with revenues Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
March 7, 2011 (March 8 on OBJ.ca)

Click here to view this article on OBJ.ca.

Ottawa firms measure value of online marketing campaigns

Scott Lake.
Ottawa Business Journal file photo.

Scott Lake says it’s a rare occasion when his company gets to meet a client face-to-face. Then again, that’s perhaps less surprising when considering his business’s focus: measuring the impact of social media campaigns on the online community.

With Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools increasingly figuring into a well-rounded marketing campaign, and as the demand grows for technology that can measure whether that strategy is actually working, Mr. Lake’s SWIX doesn’t have any trouble keeping busy – even if the schedule doesn’t include face time with customers.

SWIX’s technology tracks the number of clicks and level of engagement for each tweet, link, invitation and so on, breaks the data down by social media property, and then presents the information on a unified dashboard.

“It’s like Google Analytics for social media,” Mr. Lake says.

While not yet in the black, SWIX is “closing in quickly” on profitability, Mr. Lake notes. “We’re growing by about 15 per cent per month and we have about 1,000 accounts.”

He adds that the firm has customers in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, ranging from large marketing outfits such as Dallas’s Splash Media, which help implement social media campaigns on behalf of other clients, to organizations such as The British Council and The Home Depot Mexico.

The company is also doing beta testing for its new Social Marketer offering, which measures the return on investment and conversion-to-sales rate of each social media tool.

It’s all part of the nascent social media metrics industry, which has birthed a couple of interesting companies in Ottawa: SWIX is one, as well as Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published on OBJ.ca.
March 7, 2011

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Two Ottawa entrepreneurs are packing their bags for Montreal to work on their homegrown event-planning technology, as part of a $50,000 investment deal with startup incubator Year One Labs.

Montreal-based Year One said Monday that it had made its fifth and final investment in Assemblio, founded by Ottawa natives Jonathan Abrams and Elan Dubrofsky.

The deal will see Assemblio receiving a total of $50,000, four partners and facilities at the Year One offices, in exchange for around a 20-per-cent stake in the local company. It’s a standard arrangement with any investment that Year One makes, Mr. Abrams noted.

“We’re actually leaving our jobs right now to work on Assemblio full-time,” he said in an interview with OBJ.

While the company is not out of stealth mode and details are few and far between – Assemblio’s website is currently Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Feb. 21, 2011 (March 2 on OBJ.ca)

Click here to view this article on OBJ.ca.

The tight venture capital climate appears to be easing, with reports showing an increase in deal flow over the past year, but observers are skeptical it’s an indicator of any long-term growth or that recent investment-boosting initiatives are having their desired effect.

Venture capital investments in Canada grew 10 per cent to $1.1 billion and the number of companies financed rose five per cent in 2010, according to data from Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association and its research partner, Thomson Reuters.

However, the report also showed fundraising activity slowing to a 16-year low, with venture funds bringing in only $819 million in new commitments. That’s down 24 per cent from the previous year, CVCA said.

And that difficult environment will likely Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published on OBJ.ca.
Feb. 7, 2011

Click here to view this article on OBJ.ca.

Texas company created around $650,000 Nortel asset acquisition

Carleton (Mickey) Miller says his Plano, Texas-based company, BLiNQ Networks Inc., has big plans for Ottawa and the locally developed Nortel wireless technology BLiNQ acquired in 2010.

“We’re launching our product in the first half of the year, then we’re doing lab trials and … field trials in Ottawa,” says Mr. Miller, who was recently appointed as BLiNQ’s chief executive.

The company was founded in June 2010 after obtaining court approvals for its $650,000 acquisition of Nortel Networks’s intellectual property and wireless assets.

Now, BLiNQ is out of Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published on OBJ.ca.
Feb. 7, 2011

Click here to view this article on OBJ.ca.

Bankrupt Gatineau firm owes $3M in secured and unsecured debt

Sitebrand.com Inc., the wholly owned subsidiary of Sitebrand Inc. (TSX-V:SIB), is bankrupt following a failed attempt to make an acceptable proposal to its creditors.

The Gatineau-based online marketing technology company, which filed for creditor protection in early December, announced Monday that it has made an assignment in bankruptcy under the provisions of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.

“Sitebrand.com Inc.’s efforts Continue reading →