Eteam is an emergency management IT software that was scheduled to be deployed in mid-September 2001 for the New York City Office of Emergency Management. A few days before the rollout, the Sept. 11 attack hit the city.
City authorities asked E Team Inc. to jump in and handle the response and recovery efforts at the World Trade Center remotely from the company’s L.A. headquarters.
In 2005, E Team was acquired by El Segundo-based NC4 Inc. and now the technology will be used for emergency management of 16 jurisdictions in Dallas County in Texas.
The software is typically used in emergency operations centers that track information on public health, transportation and electricity, such as the number of beds available at hospitals, road closures and power outages.
Jim Montagnino, chief executive, said the nation’s heightened security requires emergency managers to quickly gain access to information across jurisdiction lines.
“Emergency management technology provides agencies with a common operating picture from which to collaborate during an emergency, which is a critical step to success,” Montagnino said.
The technology was used during the 2005 presidential inauguration, the 2006 World Cup soccer games in Germany and the 2007 Super Bowl.
E Team is one of the company’s three emergency management software products.
Last month, NC4 secured a $6.1 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security for the company’s information sharing portal that will be used for both sensitive and unclassified data. NC4 also develops a security technology product that locates and monitors suspicious packages and suicide bombings around the world. Cisco Systems Inc. is one of about 100 private enterprises that use this software.
NC4, a division that spun off of El Segundo software company Candle Corp. in 2004, has 125 employees and offices in Massachusetts and Virginia. About 35 people work here.
Social Addition
West Hollywood-based Citysearch, the popular online guide, is adding a social networking component to its Web site.
Last week, it began a partnership with MerchantCircle, a Los Altos-based social networking site for small businesses with 300,000 registered users. On the first day of merging the traffic between the two Web sites, MerchantCircle saw 3,500 additional registered users.
The partnership allows merchants to post reviews of each other on Citysearch.
“For years, we’ve been bringing merchants and consumers together an old-fashioned way, by making calls to merchants, sitting down with them and filling out forms,” said Jay Herratti, president of Citysearch, which employs 120 in L.A.
“With an online network, merchants virally invite each other and exchange reviews real time. Instead of signing them up, getting their photos taken and uploading them, the merchants do all this themselves.”
In addition to sharing content, MerchantCircle will sell videos produced by Citysearch about its merchant user base for a monthly fee. Citysearch, in turn, will advertise against MerchantCircle’s traffic and tap into users on the social networking site as potential advertisers.
“Citysearch will have access to a whole new set of merchants,” said Ben Smith, chairman and co-founder of MerchantCircle.
Citysearch belongs to New York-based IAC Inc., which also owns Ask.com, Ticketmaster and Lending Tree.
Post Logic Studio
Outsourcing to India is an old story. But an Indian company buying up American firms is unusual.
Prime Focus is India’s largest post-production company. It converts film negatives into data, adds color correction and visual effects, and prepares films for distribution.
Last week, it announced its acquisition of Hollywood-based Post Logic Studios, a post-production company, and New York-based Frantic Films, a visual effects company.
Larry Birstock, chief executive of Post Logic Studios, said the acquisition will give the company access to advanced technology and a worldwide labor pool that will give the 20-year-old company a competitive advantage.
For example, Post Logic Studio, with 110 employees here and 15 in New York, has only three people doing visual effects. With access to Prime Focus’ more than 1,000 employees in India and the acquisition of the New York visual effects company, Post Logic hopes to be able to significantly add to its business.
United Spin
United Online Inc.’s attempt to spin off its revenue-generating Web sites as a separate public company seems to be progressing nicely.
Classmates Media Corp., a subsidiary of the dial-up company, announced last week that its planned initial public offering would be a total of 12 million Class A shares, priced between $10 to $12 each. The company expects net proceeds of at least $118 million, which would go toward repaying $50 million in debt to United Online and other purposes.
Classmates stock will be listed on Nasdaq under the symbol “CLAS.”
Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230, or at [email protected].
