New York combats counterfeiting

NYC & Company, the exclusive worldwide licensing agent for the City of New York, and OpSec Security have announced a three-year contract to combat counterfeiting of the City’s world famous brands, including NYPD and FDNY. The on-product authentication program is a continuing keystone of NYC & Company’s enforcement efforts to protect the City’s valuable intellectual property.

According to Lloyd Haymes, Vice President, Licensing & Consumer Products, NYC & Company, “This coordinated enforcement strategy, which features an on-product authentication program with uniquely sequenced hangtags and holographic decals, has been a vital component of our comprehensive brand protection program.

A significant portion of the proceeds from the sale of these officially licensed products benefits the City of New York. The iconic brands currently licensed through NYC & Company include the NYPD, FDNY, New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, New York City Department of Sanitation, City of New York Parks & Recreation and New York City Department of Transportation, as well as its own stylized “NYC” trademark.

Ones to Watch: Naultilus Security Solutions' unique holography revolutionizes overt and covert solutions for brand and print security. http://www.nautilussecurity.com

Find Starbucks

Skyhook Wireless has formed a partnership with Android LBS app Find Starbucks, a simple location search app that finds Starbucks coffee shops nearest to the user. The app was released in early June and already has over 3,000 users. Find Starbucks is an example of a simple location-based app, popular because it serves a large demand of smartphone users: fulfilling their daily coffee fix. Find Starbucks can be downloaded for free today in the Android Marketplace.

Statistics on the mobile market have been added today at US Market Statistics.

Green bank technology

GreenChoice Bank has selected the Premier bank platform from Fiserv to provide an enterprise-wide technology solution. The multi-product solution implementation for GreenChoice Bank represents solutions from all five of Fiserv’s core competencies: Processing Services, Customer and Channel Management, Business Intelligence and Optimization, Risk and Compliance, and Payments. Outsourced processing through Fiserv’s regional data center is part of the bank’s strategy, making it possible for GreenChoice to operate in a much smaller space with much less hardware on site.

GreenChoice plans to be holistically earth-friendly. That means they will offer advantaged loan and deposit products to customers who embrace sustainability, incentives for employees who reduce their carbon footprint, and the encouragement of “green-collar” job creation through loan practices. This mission is further echoed in the bank’s location in Chicago’s Green Exchange, the country’s largest self-contained sustainable business community containing several dozen diverse green businesses and their employees. The bank anticipates being the Midwest’s first community bank to achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification for its location. (Harold Sherman, founder, chairman and Chief Executive Officer of GreenChoice Bank.) www.greenchoicebank.com.

IT for credit union merger

Genisys Credit Union is the result of a merger between T&C Federal Credit Union and USA Credit Union. With $1.3 billion in assets, Genisys serves more than 125,000 members and has 25 branches. The new union has converted to UltraData Enterprise. “Conversion is the largest, most complex project a financial institution can undertake, and it comes with challenges and opportunities. We wanted to make sure this merger was seamless to our members. We took the time to train all our staff extensively and had the right staff working very closely with the team from (Floida-based) Harland Financial Solutions,” said Jackie Buchanan, executive vice president and CIO of Genisys Credit Union and vice chair of the CUNA Technology Council Executive Committee. (Dianne Addington, president and CEO of Genisys Credit Union.)

$900,000 for bank's security upgrade

Nexus Technologies Group, a security integrator for the corporate and governmental security markets, has received in excess of $900,000 in security upgrade, renovation and reconfiguration work from a major banking institution. Nexus has been awarded this work at multiple legacy branches as part of the Bank’s overall effort to standardize its security infrastructure and systems across the entire branch network. Additionally, the bank has engaged Nexus to reconfigure the security infrastructure at multiple bank branches to accommodate the re-branding of these branches. Lastly, the projects awarded by the bank require that Nexus replace and reconfigure key components of their security systems with upgraded hardware and programming.

$1.6 million contract for UK company

Kofax plc, a provider of Intelligent Capture & Exchange solutions, is providing one of the world’s largest security services firms based in the U.S. and serving millions of residential, commercial and government customers with an enterprise wide capture solution. The value of the contract to Kofax is more than $1.6 million. The organization will implement Kofax software to capture images and data from approximately 30 million sales orders and related documents it receives annually at more than 200 remote sites across North America. This will reduce manual processing, improve data accuracy, increase sales order processing efficiency and accelerate “time-to-revenue”, leading to a rapid return on investment.

Kofax plc is a UK domiciled company formed in 1996, when it floated on the London Stock Exchange. Since then it has grown in excess of 20% compound annually both in profits and turnover. Kofax is headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK.

Wireless for mission- and life-critical applications

Virginia Hospital Center will deploy InnerWireless’ Horizon Converged Wireless solution across 1.1 million square feet in three buildings on its campus to ensure wireless connectivity for mission- and life-critical applications. Horizon, also known as a distributed antenna system (DAS), delivers virtually every wireless service including 3G smartphones, Wi-Fi, medical telemetry, fire/life/safety, pagers and two-way radios. (David Crutchfield, VP and CIO of Virginia Hospital Center.)

Medication solution

In its ongoing pursuit to deliver the best quality of care to its patients, Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital (PIH), a 444-bed acute care facility has activated Eclipsys’ Sunrise Pharmacy medication solution. By replacing paper processes with a centralized pharmacy information system, PIH also initiated a system-wide electronic medication record (eMAR) to support enhanced communication, speed and accuracy in dispensing patient medications. The implementation marks a critical step towards a closed loop medication process and builds upon the community hospital’s successful adoption of Eclipsys’ computerized physician order entry (CPOE) solution last year. With 300 active physician users, PIH cites CPOE adoption rates of approximately 99 percent. (Dr. Alan Endo, PIH’s director of Pharmacy.)

$1.3 million on education communication network

INX Inc has been awarded a $1.3 million contract by The State of New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) to implement an education communication network. The project will improve remote access to educational resources and connectivity to other educational entities. INX will design, implement, and maintain the communication network. (Jean Rightley, Superintendent of Education at CYFD.)

Registration & outcome student assessment system

St. Louis Public Schools has selected nFocus Software to provide the school district with a registration and outcome based student assessment system for its Community Education Program. nFocus Software will provide St. Louis Public Schools with the ability to assess, improve, and secure additional funding for its community programs and activities. (Peg Pedersen, St. Louis Community Education Supervisor.)

Baltimore promotes PEACE

The city of Baltimore has teamed with HipCricket to promote its “PEACE” (Pledge to Engage in Actions Considerate of Everyone) initiative – a community activist program which aims to highlight the many positive activities offered by the Department of Recreation and Parks and to create fun, safe, social activities for local youths. Through the program, the city hopes to connect directly with adolescents through their most personal possession, their mobile phone. The Peace Baltimore Text Club was created by the City of Baltimore in conjunction with various community and business partners including Waterfront Partnership, the Maryland Transit Administration, Downtown Partnership, Visit Baltimore (formerly BACVA), and Cordish and Company.

$17 million for Apriva software & support

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has awarded Apriva a five-year contract worth $17 million for Apriva software licenses, network equipment, third-party software, and outsourced network and help desk support for DISA’s secure wireless data and e-mail infrastructure. The contract includes the implementation and licensing of a second Apriva Gateway to provide geo-diverse failover support, the continuing license for the first Primary Apriva Gateway, wireless network services, data center services, and outsourced 24 X 7 operational management and help desk support for DISA’s entire Apriva Private Gateway infrastructure.

$43 million on night goggles

ITT Corporation has been awarded $43 million in follow-on orders from the U.S. Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command Acquisition Center for the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle (ENVG), and associated spare parts.

$49M to provide Modeling and Simulation support

Alion Science and Technology, an employee-owned technology solutions provider, today announced that it is the single award winner of an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract valued at up to $49M to provide Modeling and Simulation (M&S) support to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic (SPAWARSYSCEN Atlantic).

$5.1 million order from the U.S. Army TACOM

iRobot has received a $5.1 million order from the U.S. Army TACOM Contracting Center. This is the eleventh order under the $286 million Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) xBot contract, bringing the total contract value to approximately $86 million. The xBot contract has been moved from the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation (PEO STRI) to the U.S. Army TACOM Contracting Center. The order calls for the delivery of 14 iRobot PackBot 510 with FasTac Kit robots and spare parts. Spare parts include manipulator arms, cameras and ruggedized laptops.

$11 million on Analytic Space (A-Space) program

ManTech International Corporation has been awarded the follow-on effort for the Analytic Space (A-Space) program from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the second quarter. A-Space, a common, collaborative workspace for Intelligence Community analysts, was developed by ManTech under a previous government contract. The new, competitively awarded prime contract is valued at $11 million with a base year and two option years and includes Jive Software, NavStar, and SAIC as teammates. A-Space is a Director of National Intelligence and DIA initiative designed to give analysts secure access to large and diverse amounts of text, graphics, imagery and video intelligence spanning multiple classifications with appropriate controls. The application, which is similar to popular Web 2.0 social networking programs, now has over 10,000 users within the Intelligence Community (IC). Last year Time magazine named A-Space one of the top 50 most innovative products of the year.

US transportation industry

ExportAction has been looking at the US transportation industry and found:

Companies initiating or significantly expanding their business relationships with TMW in 2009 include: Burris Logistics; Covenant Transportation Group, Inc.; Cross Creek Trucking, Inc.; G & D Transportation, Inc.; Gordon Trucking; Guttman Oil Co.; Harris Camden Terminal Equipment; James H. Clark & Son, Inc.; J D Irving, Ltd.; LJ Rogers, Jr., Trucking, Inc.; Lee Transport Systems, LLC; Magnum, Ltd.; Managed Mobile, Inc.; Metro Canada Logistics, Inc.; Napa Transportation, Inc.; Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc.; Ryder System, Inc.; Steelhorse Freight Services, Ltd.; Sully Transport, Inc.; Terrill Transportation; Turner Brothers Trucking, LLC; TransPlus; and Whiteline Express, Ltd. TMW Systems is a developer and supplier of software designed specifically for the transportation services industry, including logistics, trucking and brokerage operations. The company offers and supports a portfolio of operations, dispatch, fleet maintenance and carrier profitability systems for businesses throughout the US, Canada and Mexico.