Technology companies poised to tap into stimulus fundsWashington Business Journal - by Darlene Darcy Staff Reporter
More than $30 billion — nearly 10 percent — of stimulus spending will fund technology infrastructure investments.
That spending will allow projects to begin that will serve as the foundation for progressing toward longer-term goals and future reforms the Obama administration hopes to achieve, including lowering the cost of health care, improving national security and increasing energy independence. The spending represents a large opportunity for several local technology companies that serve the health care, broadband and energy industries.
Health care IT
Amount: $20.6 billion
Doling the cash: Department of Health and Human Services
Goal: Use information technology, including new software and hardware implementations and systems integration, to ensure that all U.S. citizens have electronic health records and insurance, reduce health care costs and administrative errors and improve the quality of patient care.
Contenders: Technology companies that sell to commercial customers in the health care sector and to government agencies have a stake in modernizing the U.S. health care system.
Reston-based QuadraMed Corp. is one company that could increase its business as a result of $2 billion worth of financial incentives for the company’s customers as they implement new systems.
The company, which provides health information management and other systems to more than 2,000 health care facilities, has asked its board to approve up to a 20 percent increase in its annual research and development spending to ensure all its products meet government certification requirements, said Chris Callahan, QuadraMed’s vice president of product management and strategy.
The 600-employee company, which had more than $137 million in revenue in 2007, also plans to hire 30 to 40 programmers and engineers to meet the increased demand for its products and services.
There is a huge challenge to implement new health IT systems for hospitals as well as the 2,000 private physicians’ offices across the country in the time frame that is being called for, Callahan said. And while the outlook for companies such as QuadraMed and its competitors is good, unanswered questions about health IT goals have left company executives uncertain about when they will see sales get a real boost.
“All customers need to procure [technology] and demonstrate [its] meaningful use over the next 18 months,” Callahan said. But “we still don’t have a [Health and Human Services] secretary confirmed to determine what meaningful use means.”
The increased demand for services to support new health IT systems, networks and information exchanges also has attracted Chantilly-based federal tech contractor Citizant Inc. The minority, woman-owned small business does about 10 percent of its work in the federal health care sector, up from zero two years ago and recorded revenue of $16 million in 2007.
The company hopes that existing relationships will be the key to winning its share of stimulus-funded projects. Investment in health care modernization is part of the reason Citizant has been working inside the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said CEO Raymond Roberts.
“We’ve been seeing opportunity for the last two to three years” to provide electronic information assurance so health care data is accurate and secure, he said.
Other large federal contractors, such as Arlington-based Vangent Inc., Falls Church-based CSC and Perot Systems Government Services in Reston, have teams assessing which projects they will bid on. Each has provided health IT services to government agencies in the past.
Vangent, with $558 million in 2008 revenue, has won more than $36 million in recent government awards for health care-related technology services and last month tapped into new opportunities in the sector.
The company demonstrated March 23 that its health IT systems are interoperable with Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems Inc.’s technology infrastructure and comply with the requirements of the federal government’s Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel.
That capability could allow Vangent to compete with companies like CSC and Perot Systems for work on projects building out health information exchanges or network hubs that allow data sharing across organizations at the local, state and federal level.
Broadband build-out
Amount: $7.2 billion
Doling the cash: Federal Communications Commission, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Department of Agriculture
Goal: Provide broadband Internet access to underserved or unserved regions, increase broadband speeds in serviced areas and increase broadband use in households. Pervasive broadband access could benefit public services providers, the education industry, small businesses, consumers and others.
Contenders: While much of the stimulus money could be awarded to large companies in the telecommunications industry that have the resources to build out broadband networks — such as Comcast Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., Cox Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. — a number of local companies that sell or use broadband capacity to provide Internet-based services also stand to benefit from this investment through competitive grants.
Global Telecom and Technology Inc. in McLean, which resells network capacity to allow customers to transmit data across multiple carriers’ lines, plans to compete for a contract to help the National Telecommunications and Information Administration map out where broadband currently exists across the country.
The $350 million project, a first step to help the Federal Communications Commission complete a national broadband plan, will involve surveying, data collection and compiling information into a usable database.
It’s “a significant piece of the puzzle,” said Chris McKee, general counsel for Global Telecom, which generated $67 million in revenue in 2008.
Openet, an Irish company with its North American headquarters in Reston, also could benefit from the stimulus. The company — which provides automated billing management and other operations services to telecom carriers, cable and mobile software businesses — hopes to increase sales as more broadband services are provided faster and over larger areas.
Openet, with more than $45 million in 2007 revenue, gives cable and broadband providers a greater ability to see how their services are being used, which helps them increase revenue or cut costs.
Marc Price, Openet’s chief technology officer, Americas, said companies in the entertainment and mobility sector of the communications industry have remained relatively stable and cable has been one of its largest growth segments, with stimulus investments augmenting Openet’s opportunities to serve them. Openet is making significant research and development investments in new services, Price said, but declined to provide details on how much.
“There is no longer a surplus of broadband,” he said. “Service providers need to know how best to use the capacity that they have.”
XO Communications LLC in Herndon, a broadband services provider that owns about 1 million miles of metro-area fiber, is identifying projects and grants for which to apply. One of the benefits of the way investments in broadband infrastructure are being administered is that it will encourage partnering among service providers, especially those with last-mile, end-user contacts, said Heather Burnett Gold, XO’s senior vice president of external affairs.
For XO, establishing new partnerships would allow the company to expand in several markets it previously did not serve, she said. XO expects that wireless Internet service providers in rural areas are the most likely potential partners for the company because of the cost efficiencies their technology provides, especially in underserved areas where larger providers may not have an economic rationale to invest their resources.
Gold believes XO will reap benefits sooner rather than later as money starts to flow as soon as June because of the mandate that projects be completed within two years of a grant award. XO Communications is owned by XO Holdings Inc., which finished 2008 with $1.5 billion in revenue.
“Smart” power
Amount: $4.5 billion
Doling the cash: Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability
Goal: Modernize the nation’s electric grid to ensure reliable electricity delivery in an environment of growing demand, encourage greater adoption of renewable energy resources and enhance the security of energy infrastructure.
Contenders: The Department of Energy is expected to begin selecting utility companies as recipients of stimulus money for energy programs meant to automate the nation’s power source to save money and conserve energy. But private industry partners with the technologies to make the power system smarter are going to be critical in making utility companies’ proposed projects a reality.
Arlington-based GridPoint Inc., which sells technology systems that enable utilities to combine information from various energy resources and optimize their use in a single Web-based interface, is identifying opportunities with utility partners that could begin stimulus funded projects, said Karl Lewis, the company’s chief strategy officer. GridPoint’s technology system also allows utilities to integrate other software to help manage the way energy is used and increase the overall reliability of the grid.
The private company — backed by venture firm New Enterprise Associates with offices in Chevy Chase and Baltimore, New York-based Susquehanna Private Equity Investments and others — partnered with Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy Inc. in May 2008 to create SmartGridCity in Boulder, Colo., a $100 million project.
Current Group LLC in Germantown also participated on Xcel’s team to create SmartGridCity. Current Group, which provides remote-sensing technology to utilities for tracking power grid performance, broke into the smart grid market last June and is working with foreign utilities on three smart grids in Europe and South America.
Eka Systems Inc., another Germantown-based competitor in the fast-growing energy-metering market, is gearing up for participation in utility companies’ projects. Having received their fourth injection of capital, worth $18.5 million, last summer, Eka Systems executives say their technology is ready to compete for use in new government supported projects. |
发表于 2009-4-15 09:11:03