Hidden Gems: Three local companies gain national attention
Noble Hospital Stroke Project members. Back row left to right: Ann Reichert RN CQI Manager, Jennifer Nugent RN Sr. Director, Quality Improvement Initiative, AHA, Felicia Bycenski RN Manager Emergency Department, Cathy Bastible RN Manager Bronson Rehab Therapy Howard Baker MD, Brenda Theriaque RN Stroke Project Coordinator Front Row: Julie Heim RN, Vicky Tiglias Director Quality Improvement Initiatives American Heart Association, Francis Horrigan MD, Lori Gamelli CQI. Missing from photo: Stanley Strzempko MD, Armand Aliotta MD, Denzel Reid MD
By Bob McCarthy
From the offices of Atalasoft on the third floor of 116 Pleasant Street in Easthampton, one can look out over the Manhan Rail Trail and towards the mountain range separating this town with a population of 20,000 from Holyoke to the east. Both Atalasoft and Universal Mind less than 12 miles away in Westfield are small technology companies that have hit it big in the sense that they have received national recognition for what they do and how they do it. The same can be said for Noble Hospital and the recognition it received after nearly two years of concentrated effort in aiding stroke patients.
And while Noble Hospital, it is safe to say, probably has more local name recognition, all three companies situated right here in the historic Pioneer Valley -- have caught the eyes of and won kudos from national observers.
And that's a change worth noting. All three companies provide products and/or services that directly or indirectly help people. These companies in one way or the other use technology to help people. These companies -- and others like them up and down the river valley are using the Internet, virtual teams and talented staff to improve the world, from right here in western Massachusetts. They are hidden and not-so-hidden gems that are on the forefront of changing the manufacturing and economic face of the region. And that is a good thing.
Universal Mind
Universal Mind was recently ranked number 343 among the Inc. Magazine 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in the United States, with a three-year sales growth of 853.9 percent. In addition, the company ranked 41st on the magazine's list of the Top 100 IT Services Companies in 2008. In 2007, Universal Mind was also ranked 290 of 5000.
Universal Mind provides professional services and solutions based on Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology for enterprises and public sector organizations. The company provides optimized web solutions and creates engaging user interfaces that enhance information delivery solving critical business problems.
Todd Cieplinski, President and CEO of Universal Mind, is a native of Springfield, a graduate of the public school system and was graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) with a degree in marketing and accounting.
"I was always passionate when it comes to technology," said Cieplinski, "I've always had an interest in it. I wouldn't say it's come easy to me, but I like dealing with complex problems and finding solutions."
After RPI, Cieplinski worked in outside sales for a number of years. He returned to the area and worked for a Connecticut based company as part of its inside sales staff. "There I refined and polished my sales skills over the phone," said Cieplinski. He found outside sales to be less cost effective because of the travel and "down time."
In 1998 he moved to Boston and went to work for a company providing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). ERP is a way to integrate the data and processes of an organization into one single system. By 1999, the World Wide Web was emerging with what Cieplinski called a "ferocious appetite" for dotcoms and startups. While Cieplinski and the company were successful, a few years later the dotcom bubble burst and he migrated to another company in Albany which later fell victim to the same fate.
"But one good thing that came out of that was a group of people that came together these are truly thought leaders and subject knowledge experts and from there is where I met my business partner, and he and I co-founded Universal Mind," said Cieplinski.
"A major factor in Universal Mind's success is how we identified very early on the rise in rich Internet and Web 2.0 applications," said Cieplinski. "These applications allow users to perform computer-intensive tasks on remote objects across a network -- such as manipulating a map or outfitting a car's options and colors. Previously such tasks were impractical, often because it took too long to refresh the computer screen."
Universal Mind is named after lyrics from a song by The Doors; Atalasoft's name and logo are derived from the rare Atala butterfly located in southern Florida.
"In 2004, we basically rolled the dice with the company," Cieplinski said. "We made a huge bet that the Internet and technology would be where it is today and we positioned ourselves for this. We totally changed our business focus. We hired Chief Technology Officer and Web 2.0 expert Tom Link as our third partner. We made investments in the hiring and training of our personnel to be proficient in that technology. We also had to sell our customers that this was going to be the future. It was going to be Web 2.0 before Web 2.0 was even a term that people used."
The Universal Mind team, which now can boast one of the largest collections of RIA experts in the world, has completed hundreds of successful implementations for highly satisfied enterprise customers across industries and geographies. It recently launched SpatialKey as a next generation Information Visualization, Analysis and Reporting System. It is designed to help organizations quickly assess location based information critical to their organizational goals, decision making processes and reporting requirements. And the company named after lyrics from a song by The Doors is looking to expand their services with plans to open offices in London and in Europe.
Atalasoft
Atalasoft, based in Easthampton, MA is a small, profitable, and growing ISV (Independent Software Vendor) with revenues doubling each year. Recently Atalasoft was ranked in Inc. Magazine's Top 100 Fastest Growing Software Companies. The 2008 Inc. 5000 list measures revenue growth from 2004 through 2007. To qualify, companies must be U.S.-based and privately held, for profit, independent-not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies-and to have had at least $200,000 in revenue in 2004, and $2 million in 2007.
Atalasoft was formed in 2000 as a sort of side project by Bill Bither, now its President and CEO. He developed inexpensive software for group manipulation of images, such as photographs. Later Bither had the opportunity to purchase the code base upon which he built the product. Over the next few years, he hired people on a contractual basis and in 2003 he hired his first full time employees, one of which was Tom Lewis, to help market and sell the new tool kit the company had developed.
"Initially we operated out of a small office over a doctor's office in Westfield," recalled Lewis. "After a year we moved to Northampton, and a year later we moved here where there is tons of space. And we have grown from nine people in Northampton to 23 fulltime employees."
"[Atalasoft provides] a software developer tool kit," said Lewis. "A software developer licenses our code to put into an application he is building for a specific function. And the functionality we provide has everything to do with imaging, photo imaging and document imaging. Obtaining an image from a scanner, a fax machine or a camera and being able to view and manipulate it."
The software developer the middleman between Atalasoft and the eventual end user has a specific business goal for his software and it varies depending on the type of business. "The way a bank needs to look at documents is different from the way an insurance company needs to look at documents," said Lewis. A bank is interested in images of checks and financial statements; an insurance company needs photographs of properties, and receipts and bank statements and the like. And there is the more well known MySpace.com.
"Every photo you see on MySpace goes through our code," said Lewis. "That is to auto sharpen and provide two or three size images. A photograph is two or three megabytes and there is no way to display that size photo to everyone who wants to see it." So when someone uploads their photograph, the Atalasoft program automatically changes the size so it can be viewed.
Atalasoft's market is any vertical industry that has a need to view and manipulate images. The current list of customers (available on the company web site) ranges from the Abu Dhabi Municipality Department and the Bank of England to the US Treasury Department, UPS and Vienna International Airport with plenty of other recognizable names in between. And that does not include the independent software vendors who are creating the applications.
And the timing has been right for these three companies. If the "good old days" of hard manufacturing have left the Pioneer Valley, it's encouraging that the right combination of technology, talent and determination can build successful businesses, create jobs and add to the economic landscape without having to set up shop in Boston or New York City.
