| VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Jun 10, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — BC-based semiconductor manufacturer, PMC-Sierra (TSX: PMCS) was named Company of the Year at the 2011 Technology Impact Awards (TIAs), hosted by the BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA).
One of BC’s largest and most profitable technology companies, PMC-Sierra leverages intellectual property, design expertise and systems knowledge across a broad range of applications aimed at global OEM leaders in the enterprise storage, wide-area-network infrastructure (WAN), fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and laser print market segments. To strengthen its market position, the company has recently made several acquisitions in the enterprise and channel storage space and next-generation broadband segment.
The Person of the Year award went to Moe Kermani, former CEO of ByCast Inc., for his vision and leadership in establishing the company as the world leader in storage virtualization software for large scale digital archives and storage in the cloud. ByCast was acquired by NetApp Inc. in 2010, where Moe is currently a Vice President. NetApp is an innovative developer of storage systems and software that help customers around the world store, manage, protect, and retain one of their most precious corporate assets: their data.
Earning the Community Leadership award was executive search firm, Odgers Berndtson, who have consistently achieved 100% employee and partner participation in their community development programs. Among others, these include managing the Board Representative program for the United Way and leading the campaign for developing a new facility at Nanook House, a subsidized daycare for vulnerable children and their families where staff spends company time reading and playing with the children each week.
The Bill Thompson Award, for the highest level of leadership in BC’s technology industry, went to Mark Betteridge, the Executive Director and CEO of Discovery Parks Trust. Under Mark’s leadership since 1991, Discovery Parks has created over 2 million square feet of office, wet lab and dry lab space to support BC’s innovation economy. The Discovery Parks facilities have been home to over 150 BC technology companies; and the organization has contributed over $16 million for research at BC universities and local organizations. Redefining public amenities, Mark recently led the creation of The Generator, an innovative partnership with the City of Vancouver that provides one year of rent-free space at Discovery Parks Vancouver to promising technology start-ups.
Nearly 1,000 representatives from BC’s technology and business community came together at the state-of-the-art Vancouver Convention Centre to recognize British Columbia’s top technologies, companies and individuals. Other winners include:
Etalim Inc. – Most Promising Pre-Commercial Technology
A New Engine for Power – The most efficient and reliable small engine ever conceived, Etalim’s patent-pending TEG device converts heat from almost any source into electricity with an astounding 45% efficiency, and many decades of maintenance-free life. A full-scale prototype of the TEG, not requiring expensive, rare or toxic materials, has run for millions of cycles, and was recently featured in the prestigious MIT Technology Review magazine.
Subserveo Inc. – Best Application of Technology
Automating Compliance and Improving Insight – Subserveo’s patented Automated Post-Trade Compliance Solution for broker/dealer securities firms replaces a laborious manual paper process for compliance officers, enabling them to spend more time on problem escalation and resolution, while providing an auditable history. While competitors focus on top-tier clients with expensive enterprise installations, Subserveo’s SaaS model targets firms of all sizes.
SunCentral Inc. – Excellence in Product Innovation
Bringing Sunlight to the Centers of High-Rise Buildings – SunCentral’s Core Sunlighting System, commercialized from UBC, brings concentrated sunlight horizontally into each floor of a building, up to 60 feet within a building’s interior and will replace electric lighting up to 40% of the time in Vancouver and 75% in sunnier climates. SunCentral is currently working with partners to get Sunlighting recognized as a new method of solar illumination.
RewardLoop – Most Promising Start-up
The Future of Loyalty – RewardLoop, formerly QR Loyalty, provides Onramp Loyalty and Enterprise Loyalty programs that replace loyalty cards with printed barcodes on receipts from point-of-sale systems that can be scanned by consumers using mobile phones. Proven to increase merchant revenue, in successful in-market pilots, RewardLoop’s sustainable competitive advantage consists of a well-protected IP portfolio spanning the restaurant, retail, grocery and hospitality sectors.
Vivonet Inc. – Emerging Company of the Year
Reinventing the Cash Register – Vivonet’s Software-as-a-service Point-of-Sale (POS) product, Halo, is processing millions of transactions every month for customers in the hospitality and retail sectors around the world. Recognized in 2010 as the 9th fastest growing company in British Columbia by Business in Vancouver, Vivonet recently completed the largest sale in the last 20 years of the point of sale industry – a $60+ million deal with hospitality giant Sodexo, and struck a marketing partnership with Intuit.
Avigilon – Team of the Year
Success for Advanced Manufacturing – Due largely to the efforts of Avigilon’s Manufacturing Operations department, the company has achieved significant increases in product and operational efficiencies. The department of 40 employees has achieved 100% customer retention rate, which is significantly higher than the industry average of 70%, enabling the company to always deliver on-time during its phenomenal sales growth, at the same time demonstrating there is a place for high quality manufacturing in North America.
“Tonight’s winners and finalists reaffirm the diversity of BC’s technology sector, delivering cross-cutting innovations that touch all sectors of the economy,” said Pascal Spothelfer, President and CEO of BCTIA. “We congratulate them for their ingenuity, adaptability and their resilience – their achievements help to put the spotlight on British Columbia.”
This year’s Technology Impact Awards attracted over 100 applications from companies of all sectors and sizes and from all corners of British Columbia.
For more information about the awards go to www.thetias.com.
Backgrounder
About the BCTIA
The BC Technology Industry Association is an industry-funded organization supporting the growth of British Columbia’s knowledge economy. Our membership of 2700+ member companies employ over 60,000 workers and represents companies of all sizes and sectors.
The BCTIA delivers programs and services that assist in the growth and success of our members and our industry. These include the Technology Impact Awards, where excellence in innovation is celebrated, PEER2PEER groups, where members connect to share and learn, and the Centre4Growth where technology entrepreneurs have access to information and coaching to assist in the growth of their business.
Avigilon
Avigilon designs, manufactures, and markets award-winning HD surveillance systems. The performance and value leader, Avigilon’s solutions protect and monitor thousands of customer sites in over 60 countries around the world. Avigilon Control Center, the world’s first open HD Network Video Management Software platform, and megapixel cameras deliver full situational awareness and actionable image detail. Campuses, transportation systems, healthcare providers, public venues, and manufacturing sites with security, safety validation, and compliance requirements all benefit from reduced investigation time and more successful investigations by immediately producing indisputable video evidence. Earning Frost & Sullivan’s Award for New Product Innovation in 2010, Avigilon also ranked among the top five fastest growing technology companies in Canada in the 2010 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 ranking. For further information, please visit www.avigilon.com.
Etalim Inc.
Etalim Inc. is developing new and groundbreaking technology that converts any fuel or heat source to electricity, with extraordinary efficiency and simplicity. The Etalim device is elegant, straightforward to manufacture, and inexpensive. Etalim’s unique engine has several addressable markets, such as utility-scale solar power, cogeneration/CHP, and backup or distributed power generation. Etalim plans to manufacture and sell power generation devices to system OEMs within numerous target markets. For more information, visit www.etalim.com.
Odgers Berndtson
Odgers Berndtson is a leading global presence in executive search, with operations in 24 countries and 50 cities worldwide. In Canada, Odgers Berndtson has grown to become the largest retained executive search firm, with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. It serves clients in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, and is a leader in recruiting CEOs, board members and C-level roles for a variety of organizations. Its collective resources, vast experience and extensive industry knowledge enhance the firm’s ability to deliver outstanding leadership talent to clients. Its consultants apply the knowledge they have gained working in a variety of sectors to generate solutions that work for their clients. For more information, visit www.odgersberndtson.ca.
PMC-Sierra
PMC (NASDAQ: PMCS) is the semiconductor innovator transforming networks that connect, move and store digital content. Building on a track record of technology leadership, we are driving innovation across storage, optical and mobile networks. Our highly integrated solutions increase performance and enable next-generation services to accelerate the network transformation. For more information visit www.pmc-sierra.com.
RewardLoop
Founded by a group of wireless technology veterans, RewardLoop (formerly QR Loyalty) is based in Vancouver, Canada. The company has received awards from both WavefrontAC and the BC Innovation Council, and has also been recognized as “The Future of Loyalty” by QSR Magazine. RewardLoop works directly with large chain restaurant, retail, hospitality, and grocery operators. The company also delivers enterprise loyalty solutions through partnerships with market-leading POS providers, ad agencies, and professional services organizations. For more information, visit www.qrloyalty.com.
Subserveo Inc.
Subserveo provides complete automated compliance and surveillance solutions to financial services organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada. Installed in days, trained in hours, and accessed online in seconds, Subserveo’s pay-as-you-go, software as a service (SaaS) model enables any sized firm to stay ahead of compliance issues through industry-leading technology. Its patented offering is relied on by broker/dealers and investment advisors for all aspects of daily compliance supervision, risk management and reporting. Visit www.subserveo.com.
SunCentral Inc.
SunCentral’s Core Sunlighting System provides sunlight to the central interior regions of multi-storey buildings, in order to substantially reduce the need for electric lighting. SunCentral is targeting the commercial, government, academic and healthcare building sectors for this technology because the energy required for electric lighting accounts for roughly 38% of a building’s electrical use, and consequently the implementation of this technology will result in a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The technology is hybrid, with artificial light automatically compensating during cloud cover and evenings. For more information, visit www.suncentralinc.com.
Vivonet Inc.
Established in 1999, Vivonet Inc. (www.vivonet.com) is the restaurant industry leader in software as a service (SaaS) solutions that enable, acquire and organize over one hundred million transactions every month for customers in Canada and the United States. Vivonet provides Halo Secure Web-Based POS, an on-demand enterprise management, POS, payment processing and performance benchmarking solution for its customers. Vivonet’s unique ability to empower the transaction data created by its customers allows them to benchmark the industry with high resolution, providing merchants with the world’s most trusted source of retail performance information, leading to better performance and higher business success rates.
Contact:
BC Technology Industry Association
Cindy Pearson
604-683-6159
cpearson@bctia.org
www.bctia.org
SOURCE: British Columbia Technology Industry Association
|
