By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Dec. 14, 2007 (Dec. 17 in the print edition)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Ed Ogonek, CEO of Bridgewater Systems.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

Bridgewater Systems may have had to lower targets for its initial public offering, but CEO Ed Ogonek says the company’s successful closing of the IPO was a feat in itself in these challenging times.

The Ottawa-based company, which makes software to manage voice-over-Internet-protocol subscriber traffic, debuted on the Toronto Stock Exchange this morning after having raised $35 million in its IPO through the sale of 6.36 million shares at $5.50 each.

The stock finished its first trading day down about 5.5 per cent, or 30 cents, to $5.10.

Of the IPO amount, $20 million came from a treasury offering and $15 million from the sale of shares by existing shareholders.

“This is an opportunity to now accelerate our growth plan going forward, with investment into global infrastructure to extend our sales and marketing reach, our solution capabilities with a broader product portfolio, and extend our high-value professional services capabilities,” Mr. Ogonek said in an interview with the OBJ.

Mr. Ogonek confirmed that the amount raised in the IPO was lower than the company had initially hoped for, with a Dow Jones report late last week saying Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Dec. 10, 2007 (Dec. 12 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

Picture this: you’re walking down the street when your cellphone beeps. It’s a message alerting you that tickets to that sought-after hockey game are now available. You go online, purchase the tickets instantly without waiting in line and voila! You’re on your way.

That immediate jump to action is what marketing departments are hoping for with this pervasive and interactive new method of reaching out to customers, especially with the tech-savvy 18-to-24 age group.

Forget e-mail marketing if you’re looking to court today’s generation, says Isabelle Perrault, director of marketing for the Ottawa Senators – the way of the future lies with mobile marketing.

“Print or TV are pretty static media, but as soon as you add mobile, it’s very interactive. It engages people, it’s relatively easy, and it’s immediate,” Ms. Perrault says.

The Ottawa Senators started using wireless marketing before the 2006-07 NHL playoffs, first registering a vanity short code to which wireless users would send a text message in order to opt into the Senators’ database.

After the playoffs, Ms. Perrault says, the hockey team’s wireless service got 800 subscribers simply from Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Nov. 5, 2007 (Nov. 7 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Ken Kirkpatrick is bullish on his company’s future as a supplier of electronic navigation systems. Analysts tend to be in accord, though they warn there are some hurdles to overcome.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

Software firm’s move to Ottawa brings it closer to big players and customers

With its situational awareness products already in use by navies around the world, analysts say OSI Geospatial Inc. is clearly the market leader in its space.

Chief executive Ken Kirkpatrick says OSI’s main product, the proprietary Electronic Chart Precise Integrated Navigation System (ECPINS), already has 60 per cent of a $100-million market, which is growing at 10 per cent annually. And that’s with 80 per cent of the world’s navies yet to convert from paper-based to electronic charting.

“Five years ago, we identified the warship navigation sector as the sector to go after and become market leader in, and we controlled the intellectual property to support our leadership position … we’ve been very successful in the naval navigation market and are the hands-down leader in that space,” says Mr. Kirkpatrick.

“A lot of what we do is in emerging markets, we’re changing how people do their job since the majority of warships navigate from paper charts and (are only beginning to) move to very sophisticated electronic systems. The good news is that the rest of the world has accepted the technology and the benefits it presents, so it’s a matter of when, not if.”

The company’s ECPINS product is an all-in-one navigation system which integrates various sensors on the bridge of a ship, including the global positioning system (GPS), radar and depth sensors, and provides the information in a single picture to allow ship commanders to know where the craft is and what its surroundings are like.

Mr. Kirkpatrick says this technology is in use by eight navies worldwide and has been standardized by the Canadian and U.K. navies. Many of the company’s military customers even require other major technology vendors – some of whom are OSI’s competitors – to integrate OSI’s product into their offerings. Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Oct. 15, 2007

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Third Brigade’s Brian O’Higgins says the arrival of all the online tools and applications that constitute “Web 2.0” has given rise to a new rogues’ gallery of security threats for which government must be prepared.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

GTEC conference looks at customer-dictated service delivery and how governments, businesses can get there together

The high-tech world has been abuzz for some time with the concept of “Web 2.0” and customer interaction with various aspects of tech, so it was only a matter of time before the government started looking at what that means for the public sector.

This is the theme for this year’s Government Technology Exhibition and Conference (GTEC), which starts Tuesday and runs until Oct. 17. The conference, now in its 15th year, allows hundreds of small and large tech companies to mingle with and market to the various levels of government and gain insight into how to work with the country’s largest enterprise.

GTEC executive director Kevin d’Entremont says the advent of user-generated sites such as YouTube and Facebook has changed the face of service delivery, and governments, just like any other enterprise, can’t afford to be left behind.

“Web 2.0 means that the consumer is now dictating when and where people want to receive services,” he says. “There are expectations in the marketplace, and governments have to follow suit with their services as well, and change their approach to be more suitable and agile. Service delivery has to be tailored or developed to serve the demands of social computing.”

Kim Devooght, vice-president (public sector) of IBM Canada which is an exhibitor and sponsor of the event, says GTEC is a great opportunity to Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Oct. 11, 2007 (Oct.15 in the paper edition)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Orezone CEO Ron Little.
(Photo supplied)

Ottawa-based mining company Orezone Resources Inc. has bought out its partner Gold Fields Ltd.’s share in its flagship West African gold mine for $200 million in cash and shares.

The deal means that Orezone has now moved from being a company focused mainly on exploration to an intermediate producer with expected production of 292,000 ounces of gold annually by 2010, at cash operating costs of $356 US per ounce.

“This transaction is very accretive, simplifies our structure, sharpens our focus on the region and enhances our production and growth plans,” said Orezone CEO Ron Little in a statement.

Orezone’s latest feasibility study showed that Gold Fields’s share in the Essakane project adds 1.6 million ounces of gold to Orezone’s reserves, plus 2.4 million ounces in measured and indicated resources and 761,000 ounces in inferred resources.

Through the Burkina Faso project, Orezone now owns a 100-per-cent interest in 2.65 million ounces of contained reserves, 4.4 million ounces of measured and indicated resources and Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Oct. 8, 2007

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Insiders, analysts say MOSAID’s stock undervalued because of market’s confusion

Have MOSAID Technologies Inc. and its new management broken their promise to deliver better results for shareholders, despite a painful restructuring process that included the ousting of several top executives and the layoffs of almost three-quarters of its staff?

It’s been more than a year since the epic public proxy battle between MOSAID and U.S.-based investment firm Loeb Partners Corp., a fight for control which has resulted in a narrowed focus on MOSAID’s biggest money-maker – its patent licensing business – and the divestiture of its two other divisions.

Loeb Partners, which had sharply criticized MOSAID’s management and argued that the company could do much better, brought in three new directors, a new CEO, board chairman and chief financial officer (see sidebar). Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Oct. 1, 2007 (Oct. 3 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Embotics’s Jay Litkey says the firm has no direct competition for its first product, but that advantage isn’t likely to last for long.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

Analysts bullish as company comes out of stealth mode

Virtual machine life cycle management systems firm Embotics only had its coming-out party earlier this month, and its flagship V-Commander product is still in its beta testing stage.

However, the company definitely wasn’t idly biding its time while in stealth mode – in December it attracted an undisclosed amount of funding and it’s already seeing product revenues. It’s put its product out for testing across several companies in the pharmaceutical, telecommunications, Internet hosting, financial services and manufacturing sectors.

The company has a relatively simple proposition for a complicated technology that’s become increasingly important for large firms. What happens with virtualization is
that companies can now easily set up new virtual servers – each of which houses a copy of an application program – without complex hardware configurations.

The problem with the ease of creating those new servers, however, is how to manage them, which is what V-Commander does.

“With the products of companies like Microsoft and VMWare, all you have to do is click a button and create a new server, and that leads to what is called ‘virtual machine (VM) sprawl,'” says Embotics CEO Jay Litkey. “There’s exponential growth in the number of servers since you no longer have to buy a physical computer (to deploy a new server), and that’s a bad thing for enterprises when they can’t know who did what and what’s happening.” Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Sept. 24, 2007

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Diversity key trait among companies at OCRI’s 2007 venture summit

There’s going to be all kinds of green at this year’s Ottawa Venture Technology Summit – from the presenting “green tech” companies hoping to score some major investment from venture capitalists, to the greenbacks that will (hopefully) pour into local industry.

The three-day summit, which begins Tuesday and is organized by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation, will see 16 local high-tech firms at various stages of maturity make brief pitches to potential investors and attempt to form new alliances in the tech sector.

But clean tech isn’t the only industry which will be making its presence known at the summit, says Ottawa Capital Network manager Dave Scollon.

“There’s a wider diversity Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Sept. 3, 2007 (Sept. 5 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

‘Thermal Energy CEO
Tim Angus.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

Thermal Energy’s green power machines heating up interest in the industrial sector

It’s no secret that many companies are looking for that magical machine which will help them save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially in this age of rising energy costs and environmental concerns.

Nonetheless, most firms are reluctant to make big investments on new technology for fear that their spending will be for naught when the machines don’t perform to their expectations.

This is where local custom energy and emissions reductions solutions maker Thermal Energy International Inc. comes in: the company markets air pollution control technology and several innovative machines which recycle wasted energy and resources to give clients access to relatively clean power at a fraction of the cost of using other energy sources.

On top of that, the company recently launched an attractive alternative to buying its machines outright, a creative financing program which is piquing the interest of some major industrial players in its main markets of North America and China.

The company’s Alternate Utility Delivery (AUD) program allows clients Continue reading →