Friday, November 23, 2007

The final frontier

Monday is the deadline to register for Experience Colorado Springs at Pikes Peak’s annual dinner and silent auction. The event is 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 2886 S Circle Drive. Guest speaker is Brian Duffy, a 1975 U.S. Air Force Academy graduate who commanded the 100th space shuttle mission. Cost is $60 per person; go to www.experiencecoloradosprings.com to register online or call 685-7621. Among silent auction items: a tourist trip into space, with bidding beginning at a mere $30 million.

HBA holds annual membership dinner

The annual membership dinner of the Housing & Building Association of Colorado Springs will take place at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 28 at the Antlers Hilton hotel, 4 s. Cascade Ave. in downtown Colorado Springs. The event will include installation of HBA officers for 2008, including board president Bobby Ingels of the Ingels Co. Ralph Braden of Nor'wood Development Group will become president-elect for 2009. The event also will include a send-off for George Hess of Vantage Homes, who served as 2007 board president. The cost for the dinner is $50. More information: 592-1800 or www.cshba.com.



Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Innerwall sold to Ohio firm

Frank Ricotta had to either raise more venture capital or negotiate a sale for Innerwall Inc. to get its network security software to a wider market.
Ricotta chose the latter, agreeing to sell Innerwall in May to Dayton, Ohio-based Enterprise Information Management Inc. for an undisclosed price. Enterprise retained all 11 Innerwall employees, who now operate Enterprise’s western regional office in the Springs.
Innerwall was a subcontractor on a $49.1 million, five-year Army contract Enterprise won last year to turn more than 100,000 paper forms into Web-based documents that are digitally “signed” for supply orders, personnel, medical, transportation and other matters.
“We needed a broader platform to launch our technology and since we had worked together on the Army program, we found there were a lot synergies, including a similar customer set and technology vision,” said Ricotta, who was Innerwall’s co-founder and CEO.
Innerwall had cut its staff from 35 to 11 about a year ago, when it restructured its marketing strategy and sales team to focus on a few core clients. A few months later, Enterprise began negotiations to acquire Innerwall, said Enterprise CEO Bruce Lyman.
Innerwall was started in 2002 and was funded by $7.5 million from investors that included XAware Inc. Chairman Bill Miller, Adam Aircraft Inc. Chairman Rick Adam and Vince Cook, former vice chairman of Science Applications International Corp.
“The technology is brilliant, the team is first class and it allows us to bring a complete solution to our customers” by including Innerwall’s network security software as part of Enterprise’s document automation software sold to military and government agencies, said Enterprise CEO Bruce Lyman.
Innerwall’s software allows only “healthy” computers to be connected to corporate networks and makes sure they comply with all of an organization’s computer security policies as well as helping networks recover from breaches by restoring them quickly to their previous state.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Car rentals up for holiday travel

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the nation’s largest rental car company, said it is experiencing a 20 percent increase over last year in advance reservations for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

The company attributes the increase to concern over high gas prices leading people to leave their family cars at home and rent a more fuel-efficient vehicle for holiday travel.
Enterprise rents hybrids, flexible-fuel vehicles that run on E85, along with vehicles with highway fuel efficiency ratings of 28 miles per gallon or more.