Baltimore County : Innovation + Job News

The incubator at University of Maryland, Baltimore County has gotten an influx of new tenants, the majority of whom are responding to the increased demand for cyber security. 

bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park currently hosts 86 incubator and early-stage tenants and 14 affiliated companies and organizations, according to Gregory Simmons, the park's vice president for institutional advancement.

Of the tenants, nearly 20 have joined the park in the past 18 months alone. They include Fearless Solutions, Rogue Technology, AIS (Assured Information Security) Inc., all of which are in the cyber security field.  Simmons says that most of the new tenants are also in that field, often in the area of securing data and networks, in medical, defense and financial services, among others.
 
“They offer a broad array of services," Simmons says.
 
He attributes the interest in cyber security at the park to a number of factors, from the Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC) process going on at nearby Fort Meade to the number of federal agencies in the area.
 
Other factors are the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), whose computer science department is well known in the field, and the state of Maryland, which for the past two years has been establishing itself as a cyber-hub for companies and jobs.

"UMBC is excited about supporting the cyber Maryland initiative by preparing the workforce of tomorrow, supporting entrepreneurs and working to strengthen the Maryland economy," says Simons. 
 
Of the new tenants, the few that are not in cyber security are in fields that mirror the strengths of UMBC for life sciences, clean energy and IT.
 
Located on a 71-acre campus in Baltimore County’s Catonsville community, the park consists of eight buildings with 500,000-square feet of office and lab space.
 

Source: Gregory Simmons, bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 
 
 

K12 Enterprise, a business software firm for public school systems, intends to double the number of employees from its current 40 within the next two to three years. The Towson firm's expansion is the result of its acquisition last month of Sartox, a Virginia-based firm that also specialized in business software for public school systems.

The company will hire developers, IT consultants, sales and marketing staff and help desk workers, K12 CEO Andrew Fass says. 

Of K12 Enterprise's employees, 11 came from Sartox. K12 Enterprise employees are being trained in the Sartox system in order to retain Sartox's customers and attract new ones. 
 
K12 Enterprise is Microsoft's leading enterprise-grade financial and human resource management software for school systems used from kindergarten through the 12th grade.

“Sartox occupied the same space but different geography,” Fass says.
 
K12 Enterprise operates primarily in Pennsylvania, with a presence in New York State, Connecticut, Virginia and Texas, according to Fass. Sartox’s customers were mainly in Virginia and North Carolina, where it served more than 50 percent of the latter state’s 110 school systems. K12 Enterprises intends to attract customers in those and other southern states, Fass says.
 
K12 Enterprise installs the software, converts the school system’s data to the system, trains school personnel on its use and provides ongoing support and maintenance. The price is based on the number of students in a school district, and can range from $40,000 to $250,000 and up.
 
K12 Enterprise and Sartox established a partnership in 2010 when Sartox became an official reseller of K12 Enterprise software. Terry Garber, Sartox’s president, has become general manager of K12 Enterprise’s Virginia office. 

Source: K12 Enterprise CEO Andrew Fass
Writer: Barbara Pash

Learn It Systems, an educational systems developer based in Owings Mills, is planning to hire more than 100 educational professionals to staff its services in the Baltimore area.

The employment growth stems from new contracts with public and private schools to provide educational services. The company currently serves 30,000 children in around 1500 schools and online, in more than 200 school districts, and across 37 states, with 160 full-time employees and 6000 part-time teachers, paraprofessionals, and aides.
 
Learn It wants to hire individuals with certification in teaching, speech therapy, occupational and physical therapy, counseling services, and speech-language evaluation to fill part-time and full-time slots.

“Baltimore is becoming a sort of Silicon Valley for the for-profit education sector,” says Learn It Systems CEO Michael Maloney.
 
“You can flex up and down based on the case load you desire. If you’re a certified therapist, we may assign you in the state you currently reside in, or to work from home with a student that lives in another state. We’ll work through and support that certification process,” Maloney says.
 
Many hired individuals will work in summer school, and others will help Learn It pilot an online speech therapy platform.
 
Interested education professionals should contact Learn It Systems via their website: Learn It Systems Join Our Team.

Writer: Sam Hopkins
Source: Michael Maloney, Learn It Systems

An Atlanta software company and a Bethesda mobile security firm are the newest companies to join a University of Maryland, Baltimore County incubator sponsored by Northrop Grumman.

Both AccelerEyes and KoolSpan Inc. say they plan to grow their staff at the Northrop Grumman Cync Program, which looks for startups in the cybersecurity arena.

AccelerEyes currently has one employee at the Catonsville school but its Director of Business Development Scott Blakeslee says it could add sales and engineering staff in the next six months to a year as it hopefully makes inroads in the defense industry.

Late last year, AccelerEyes launched a new product called ArrayFire, a software library that speeds up application development. It also offers a consulting service to help businesses speed up their development of software code.

Blakeslee says the company joined the incubator to take advantage of the technical resources and research assistance thatUMBC and Northrop Grumman provide.

AccelerEyes employs 10 in Atlanta.

KoolSpan, which employs around 25 in total, also has just one employee at UMBC. But CEO Gregg Smith says he hopes to add software talent from UMBC as the company expands its mobile security products worldwide. With clients in 42 countries,KoolSpan is “aggressively growing its international business,” Smith says. 

Writer: Julekha Dash
Sources: Gregg Smith, KookSpan; Scott Blakeslee, AccelerEyes

Clapp Communications is having a busy spring. The Lutherville marketing agency is moving to a larger office, adding new clients and employees. 

The company has added several new clients to its roster, including the Milton Inn. The agency will handle branding, social media and graphic design for the historic Sparks restaurant. To keep up with the influx of new work, Clapp Communications added two employees in February and will add more staff in early March.

Formerly known as Barb Clapp Advertising & Marketing, the company decided on a name change in November as it celebrated its 10^th anniversary. The name change was intended to better reflect the firm's current purpose. Along with the name change has come expansion for the company, both here in Greater Baltimore and in a new market. The firm is expanding its Lutherville office next month. In November, it added a second office in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Writer: Amy McNeal
Source Colleen Riopko, Barb Clapp; Clapp Communications 

Render Perfect Productions Inc. is changing its focus from straight video production for businesses and individuals to full service media and website production. The Towson based will now offer media production, web design and web marketing services instead of just video production.

“We have shifted our services from video production to value-added video production,” says Nikc Miller, director of post production at Render Perfect Productions. “This means that instead of simply doing video for those groups that need it, we pay attention to our clients goals and create a strategy for their video so they can get more sales. This involves getting their video more exposure via landing pages, social media, Google ad buys, whatever.”

Render Perfect is still offering video production services, but has added several services to its menu. The company is promoting video landing pages for websites, Facebook pages and other online use. The web design team has the capacity to do website coding in HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, Flash, JavaScript, jQuery, and more. The website marketing arm offers branding, search engine optimization and social media management. The company has been ramping up its service offerings for the last 12 months to complete a transformation from strict video production to a media and marketing shop.


Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: Nikc Miller, Render Perfect Productions Inc.

Baltimore County is adding more services and greater outreach to the HOMEFRONT – Our Turn To Serve veteran reintegration program. The program is designed to help veterans returning from deployment find jobs and settle back in at home in Baltimore.

The program offers veterans an array of services to help with reintegration, says Baltimore County spokeswoman Ellen Kobler. A special section of the county website is dedicated to providing veterans with a one stop clearinghouse of information about veterans services. Baltimore County's Workforce Centers in Hunt Valley, Eastpoint and Randallstown have a full time staffer at each location dedicated to helping veterans find new jobs. Baltimore County has also instituted a hiring preference for veterans, giving them priority for screening and hiring for vacant county positions.

Baltimore County has open positions in nursing, corrections, emergency services and purchasing. The county will be spreading the word about its veterans initiatives and deploying its Mobile Career Center at Yellow Ribbon Reintegration events sponsored by the National Guard throughout the year.


Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: Ellen Kobler, Baltimore County Office of Communications

AVF Consulting has just picked up a new client, the American Psychological Association. AVF's new relationship with the APA means new jobs and a big new project for the 25-year-old accounting and supply chain software company.

The association started looking for a company that could find the business solutions that they needed more than a year ago. AVF completed several days of product demonstrations, and approximately 300 hours of requirements analysis before the contract was signed.

The association will install Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Serenic Navigator. AVF expects implementation to take about 12 months, and plans to begin the process in March, President Jeremy Fass says. The process will start with the association's back office accounting and move into the organization's supply chain in later stages.

AVF Consulting is hiring to meet the increased workload. The company is searching for an experienced project manager, senior consultants and a customer support manager.

Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: Jeremy Fass, AVF Consulting

The distressed real estate market is offering an opportunity for growth for ProGymSystems. The Baltimore based company is launching a new venture to open fitness studios in office properties with a high vacancy rate.

“Fitness and healthy living aren’t only hobbies for the fit crowd or bodybuilders. They are becoming the lifestyle of choice for the mainstream,” says ProGymSystems Director W. Thomas Sjolander.

The company sees the current real estate environment as an opportunity for expansion, and is marketing their new concept to property managers looking to attract new tenants to highly vacant properties by offering upgraded amenities.
“Many office buildings have high vacancy rates,” Sjolander says. “ Amenities like a free fitness center will help attract new tenants and even retain current tenants.”

ProGymSystems typically designs gyms for hotels, private clients and multi-housing properties. The company has designed gyms at the Saratoga Lofts in Baltimore and TownPlace Suites at Arundel Mills. ProGymSystems has approached several area property developers with the new concept, including Corporate Office Properties Trust, JBG Rosenfeld, Chesapeake Property Management and St. John Properties.

Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: W. Thomas Sjolander, ProGymSystems

The Lunchbox Lady, which provides box lunches for corporate events, is launching a new menu this month, and planning to hire at least one additional full time food production worker and one part time driver this year.

The business has grown steadily, eventually outgrowing its original location. Last year, the business moved from Arbutus to Halethorpe – and business grew 185 percent. The Lunchbox Lady added three new staffers, and the business is still expanding.

Corporate downsizing brought Baltimore native Connie Henninger Neiman back to the food industry. The former co-owner of Henninger's in Fells Point left the restaurant business in 1989 to become and insurance broker. After 20 years in the business and two layoffs, Connie went back to her roots in the food business and reinvented herself as The Lunchbox Lady.

“All of the ladies that I have hired in the past three-and-half years have been downsized from various professional careers, so they have varied experience and most of all, they have invested their ideas and talents and share in my vision of growing this business,” says The Lunchbox Lady owner Connie Henninger Neiman.

“I am a very lucky person, because I have acquired employees that really believe in what they are doing and that is why our food and presentation is very high quality,” says Henninger Neiman.

Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: Connie Henninger Neiman, The Lunchbox Lady

Keeping track of what a work crew is doing is a challenge for landscaping and construction firms. Akehurst Landscaping Services, Inc. in Joppa is solving that problem by implementing iCREWtek tracking software.

The software helps the firm keep track of its crews and  empowers them to be more efficient and accountable in estimating, scheduling and business management duties, says Akehurst Landscaping Services Business Developer David Sheredy.
 
Using iCREWtek, Akehurst Landscaping is able to do real time monitoring of all of the company's work crews.

iCREWtek is an extension of Asset, a business management application for landscaping services produced by Annapolis-based software developer Include Software.

Customer invoices, job site photos, materials management and time sheets can be processed paperlessly and remotely, which allows for more accurate estimates and faster billing. The software also has English/Spanish communication capability to increase communications accuracy.


Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: David Sheredy, Akehurst Landscaping Services Inc.

CampaignON, a campaign management software company in Towson, has partnered with Baltimore's Weiss PR Associates Inc. to help candidates get their campaign messages out  --- just as the 2012 election season heats up. 

Weiss PR will be providing candidates with a wide range of public relations services, including strategic communications planning, media outreach, public affairs, issue management, community relations, and crisis communications, says Weiss PR President Ray Weiss

Weiss PR has worked with candidates on the state and local level, including PR support for former Baltimore County Executive Dennis Rasmussen when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006.

Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: Ray Weiss, Weiss PR Associates Inc.

Baltimore Entrepreneur James Cullen was looking for more fulfillment from life than his career as a lawyer was providing. He found an outlet for his creativity by becoming a designer of custom stickers. His growing sticker company, My Custom Sticker, recently launched a new website to sell both pop culture and custom sticker designs directly to the public.

"I was walking my dog, and I noticed that every other car in my neighborhood had a Nantucket sticker on one side of their bumper and a Maryland Club parking sticker on the other. I happen to know the Maryland Club only has 12 parking places. It struck me that people like to advertise what they do, what they're proud of, where they belong, or what they like," Cullen says.

The Hunt Valley-based company is growing. My Custom Sticker employs 9 people, but is looking to add staff. The company recently added four designs from the popular BBC television series Doctor Who to their catalog. My Custom Sticker has expanded their catalog for wide appeal, from 50 designs at launch to over 1600 designs today.

"We started out doing area-specific souvenirs using text, but what began to set us apart is our graphics. For example, we have over 100 dog breeds. We have everything from New Age to Celtic to hunting and fishing to sports. Our stickers give you an inexpensive way to display what makes you unique and how you relate to everyone else," Cullen continues.

The company is focusing now on developing a business-to-business website, allowing wholesale clients to buy in bulk or create their own designs. My Custom Sticker expects to have the new B2B site up and running by the end of this year.


Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: James Cullen, My Custom Sticker

AVF Consulting is growing. The Towson-based company offers ERP business management software and IT consulting to clients in retail, education, and the nonprofit sector. AVF recently added four new clients to its roster. Unity Healthcare, Community Options, Inc. and The Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute, Inc. have signed on with AVF to implement new management and accounting software. Pet supply retailer Care-A-Lot is also working with AVF on IT solutions as it moves from an online operation to brick and mortar retail.

"We're an organization that focuses on helping nonprofits deploy newer accounting systems to help them become more efficient. We bring 25 years worth of experience to the table working with similar organizations, understanding how non-profits operate. We have the professionals on staff that help them get the most out of it," says Jeremy Fass, Executive Vice President of AVF Consulting.

The company is also looking to expand staff as it develops these new projects. AVF has just added new staff to focus on its newest division - - outsourced accounting services. They're also looking for nonprofit and retail implementation consultants.

"We're hiring and growing, very selectively," Fass says. "We're focused on hiring and retaining professionals who understand how to create solutions to people's problems."

The company recently started work on a solutions study with the American Psychiatric Association to explore possibly implementing new software. The project is in the early planning phases, as the two organizations explore the feasibility of the budget and requirements.


Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: Jeremy Fass, AVF Consulting, Inc.

Forget about your New Year's dieting resolution -- it's Restaurant Week again in Baltimore County and Baltimore City.

The County launched its first two-week celebration of area restaurants on Jan. 14. The two week-long event offers diners deals on prix fixe menus ranging from $10 for lunch to $35 for dinner at more than 40 restaurants from across the County.

"From fine dining to family dining, you will find something to suit your taste and wallet during Baltimore County Restaurant Week," says Keith Scott, president and CEO of the Baltimore County Chamber of Commerce. A full list of participating restaurants, menus and reservation links can be found at www.BaltimoreCountyRestaurantWeek.com.

In FY 2010, Baltimore County's restaurant sales brought in $1.2 billion, ranking second highest in Maryland; Montgomery County led with $1.5 billion.

"As a lifelong County resident, I am always pleased to find new ways to enjoy all the County has to offer," says John Olszewski, Sr., chair of the Baltimore County Council. "Baltimore County Restaurant Week is a great opportunity for folks to try something new or visit a favorite spot."

Baltimore City's Winter Restaurant Week will welcome diners to more than 85 area restaurants for the third year starting Jan. 21. Participating establishments located throughout Baltimore will offer special three-course dinner prix fixe menus for $35.11 (liquor, tax, and gratuity not included). Many will also offer three-course lunch prix fixe menus for $20.11. Select restaurants will also offer additional value-added opportunities including chef's dinner, wine flights, and wine pairings to accompany the prix fixe meals.

A complete list of participating restaurants for Baltimore's Winter Restaurant Week is available online at www.BaltimoreRestaurantWeek.com. The site will include menus for most of the participating restaurants, parking information, and a map of restaurant locations. Consumers are urged to book their reservations early before the restaurants are booked.

As an added bonus, for every restaurant that participates in Baltimore's Winter Restaurant Week, Visit Baltimore and Downtown Partnership will donate $50 to The Journey Home, an agency that provides services to assist the homeless in finding permanent and supportive homes. Diners can also make a $10 donation by texting the word JOIN to 20222. Money raised from Friday, January 21, 2011 to Sunday January 30, 2011 will benefit The Journey Home.

Source: Baltimore County Office of Economic Development, BACVA and Downtown Partnership
Writer: Walaika Haskins